Frank
by The Water Daemon
Summary: A story about Frank Sloth before his illustrious career as a villain. COMPLETE.
1. Waste

_Author's note: So, uh, this whole thing took me like, 1 week to write, so if there are errors and an inconsistency in voice (which I know there is) please forgive me. My writing style has changed a lot from The Sloth Monologues if you were one of the few that read it (and the even fewer that liked it), so please take that in account if you find Sloth too not angsty or too much of an ass hole. I'll be posting the rest in like … five day intervals? That sound good? Ok._

_Peace and love, _

_J. Dac_

It's a rare and shining moment when you meet a broad who can dance, especially if she's equipped with brains. A girl who can bend like putty every time you sway her body—a girl who can merge into your hip like her pelvis belongs on yours—a girl who can tiptoe her tiny feet across the dance floor like a tightrope walker and still stay around for a chat and cigarettes afterwards—that girl's a jewel.

Like all great things, those kind of girls never come in pairs. You never find a diamond so exquisite twice in your life, especially sequentially, and that kind of a woman's no different. You could sift through the muddy streams of women with the most intricate filter and never strike gold twice—but a gold rush is started by only a smattering of gold bouncing through a tin. Likewise, many after me reached for her caramel elbow and tried to waltz her away by the waist; but she always comes twirling back to me after a momentary tango, refreshed and ready for more.

She has a name, you know. "Space Faerie"'s pretty generic, don't you think? I mean, you don't go around calling Fyora "Queen Faerie" or Jhudora "Bitch Faerie," do you? Hoshiya. That's her name, but we all called her Hoshi.

My name is Frank. That's the only real name I have—a given name. A "Christian" name, if you will. Faeries don't have surnames, and I followed that tradition up until adolescence.

That's when I got sucked into this little band called "Kasey and the Sloths." I was the keyboardist. It was actually an insult to my years of feverishly seeking the proper funny bone on the ivories to tickle, and it paid like shit, but it was something to do between work, the lab and ridicule by dark faeries. I wasn't Kasey—Kasey was an obnoxious moron that insisted on wearing her hair in a feathered eighties style and screaming into the microphone with no concept of pitch. I was one of the Sloths—God knows how we got that title, because Kasey's variable tempo forced us to play like Seabiscuit with a cattle prod at his ass.

Anyway, I liked the name, so I took it. Frank Sloth. An ugly, monosyllabic name, but it kind of worked for me.

See, I've never been what you'd call 'attractive,' especially by faerie standards. Faeries expect their population to be nothing less than supermodels—glowing skin, perfectly primped wings, hair styled at the peak of fashion. Thanks to this, most faeries wind up being female, but as procreation generally requires two genders, they have a small flock of males. Males tend to be rather popular amongst the community with their impeccable pectorals, throbbing biceps and Fabio-good-looks, along with the fact that there's about a 100:1 female to male ratio.

I'm a male, but you'll never see me on the cover of any tawdy paperbacks courageously holding a half-naked maiden in my arms, especially not nowadays. Back then, I was passable among human standards, except for maybe the green hair and red irises. My body frame was fairly lanky, but my skin was anemic enough to register as faerie; my ridiculously pointy ears also gave it away. Thanks to my lack of muscles, I was always freezing in the paper-thin atmosphere of Faerieland, so more often than not I was condemned to a life wrapped in suffocating sweaters and scarves. I also had to wear rather thick glasses that detracted from my status as 'studmuffin.' Red eyes are a recessive trait among faeries, and as such those that have them generally have ocular ailments.

Physically, I was about as runty as they came. My wings were nothing to write home about; they were threadbare and torn, and a lemon-lime color at best. Being an orphan since my birth didn't help either. Gruel doesn't do much to build up muscles, and the heavy beatings administered by bigger, older orphans (usually future butches) helped to give my eyes that classic, intellectual 'sunken in' appearance. This was only aided by the fact I took refuge in libraries and museums alike, idly cramming in information while relying on the shield of shelves to hide from bullies.

This story isn't about me, though. This story's about Hoshi. Hoshi, my muse. You wouldn't think scientists would have muses, but that inspiration isn't reserved for just literary hotshots. Science relies on creativity just as much as intelligence, and that art sparked from her.

She floated into my life on the dance floor at a wedding, her hips tracing perfect curves in the air. It was a marriage of one of my bandmates—I was still in The Sloths at the time, much to my financial chagrin. Paulia, my bandmate, was to marry the lucky and ungrateful Weryra, the biggest gnomer I met in my life. Of course, I've never minded gnomers, as long as I can bum some off of them—but marrying one of them was out of the question. I warned Paul about her terrible choice in a bride, but she brushed it off with that half-assed excuse of "but I love her, Frank."

Besides, what was an unmarketable faerie like me doing giving relationship advice?

Hoshi was a friend of Wery, which at first set off ambulance alarms in my mind, warning me 'hands-off.' The fact that at every interim of music she would pause at a table and finger a white substance from a cloth bag to her nose was also worrisome. Yet there's something hypnotic about the waves and trembles of a woman's curves that are irresistible. Yes, Hoshi wasn't just a faerie—she was a bonafide _woman._

It was during a fast song that I made my move. The beatbox drums were set to a level that made it nearly undanceable, weeding out those with no real intention to throw down. My limbs were a mess of unmovable spaghetti in moments, and I was preparing to quit when my eyes lit on Hoshi.

There she was, in the midst of the remaining dancers, beating her feet against the floor in perfect rhythm. It seemed impossible for a body to move that fast—her arms in a looping frenzy and her wings a dash of blue against her back—but there she was, a medicine woman entranced in the beat. Her hair was long then, but still freckled with stars, and with each progressive beat a strand of hair strayed away from the flock until every strand stayed on end, her body a channel for unexplained electricity. While her companions began to drop like flies about her, she continued her insane intensity, seeming to grow even faster. She lived in a world where speed was a matter of choice, and with an internal magic she achieved light speed at will.

Without my noticing, she had been stripped of followers, and suddenly it was only her and me on the dance floor. I had ceased dancing a while ago, but now she approached me, her crimson eyes alight with the enchantment of an age of shamans. There was no chance I would dance back at her, let alone challenge her to a dance-off, so I slowly backed off, hoping to make it off the dance floor in one piece. But she was having none of that. She seemed to come at me from all sides, trapping me into one little square of the dance floor, breathing in all of my oxygen. I shrank back into myself, but she would not allow my escape—I was her captive, and she my master.

The music came to an abrupt halt suddenly, and there was utter silence among the drunken masses. Hoshi had materialized back to one entity and was completely still, a statue leaning towards my face. I was bent backwards, eyes wide and locked with hers, scarlet reflecting scarlet.

"Hi," I managed to squeak, sounding prepubescent at best. "This is where you get out of my face."

Her face stayed stagnant for a moment, then split into a smirk. "Frank, is it?"

"Yeah. Yours?"

"Hoshi."

She pulled away from me, breaking the magnetism that had formulated in a matter of minutes. The party returned to normal, rousing voices lighting the night with slurs and happy screams, but I remained changed. As the dance floor filled up and spilled over like a head of beer, Hoshi retreated without a word from her stance, taking shelter in a table in the back. I followed her like a disciple, intrigued.

"How did you know my name?" I asked, taking a plastic lawn chair next to her. She was already fingering that white powder into her nose, shaking her head after every inhalation.

"You're kind of the butt of most faerie jokes." She paused, looking at me for a hurtful reaction. I declined her the privilege. "Sorry. It's just the truth. You shred the keyboards, though." I had played earlier for the benefit of the crowd. "Coke?" She scooped up a fingerful of the powder and held it out for me. I waved it away. She shrugged and took it herself, more than willingly.

"You're quite a dancer, you know."

"I suppose," she dismissed, pulling her hair back with her hands. Fully revealed, her face was gorgeously exotic, toasted brown yet rosy, made bright by her spitfire eyes. She tied her luxurious velvet hair back in a sloppy ponytail, shaking out the bangs into her face. "You looked kind of scared out there." She itched her nostril. "Do I intimidate you?"

"Not really."

"Oh." She sounded a shade dejected.

"Where you from, Hoshi?"

She pointed upwards, through the gazebo roof and to the black expanse veiled by clouds above us. "There."

"The sky?"

"Nope. Space."

"How the hell do you breathe up there?"

"I don't." She took another a noseful of coke. "I only use the lungs down here."

"So you're kind of like an amphibian."

"Sort of. Except I'm not slimy." With wide eyes, she looked up at me with absolute innocence. "Am I?"

Though she was doused in a layer of glistening sweat, I doubted it. "I don't know. I'm a scientist, though. So you're gonna have to let me inspect you if you want to know." I reached forward, as if to relieve her of the light weight, red-and-black dress she wore. She reeled back immediately, clutching at the bosom as it had no straps.

"Perv," she accused, her eyes flashing. I laughed at her gullibility.

"I'm kidding, sweetheart. Jeez, that crack makes you highstrung, huh?"

"It's _coke_."

"Right." I paused. "Listen, am I the only one who thinks this wedding is boring?"

"If I died, then yes."

"What would you say to leaving?"

"I'd consider it."

"You've got five seconds. Ok? Five …"

"Hold on."

"… Four …"

"Ok, let's go."

"I knew you'd come around."

"You're lucky you're cute."

My heart blossomed as we stood up at that comment. Never before had such an adjective been laid upon my person—and the first time it was uttered paved a path towards impulsive affairs. There was no need for bouquet or garter-catching—the moon swollen with romance in the sky was proof enough. From that moment on, I walked the rocky road of love.

We didn't fuck the first night. God knows, I would've loved that—half of the purpose of why I had asked her away was so we could fuck. But she was far more guarded than that, my beauty from the stars. She wouldn't even let me lay my lips on her even as we balanced on our bodies on the rickety structure of my bed. We talked on a variety of subjects; despite her affinity for that dusty drug, she was well-versed in a number of topics.

I explained to her what being a 'scientist' meant, a term she was only vaguely acquainted with, typical of most faeries. There was only one institution in Faerieland that was equipped for scientific, rather than magical, teachings, and it had been situated in a rather shady area of Faerieland to discourage inhabitants from pursuing hard facts. Called The Faerie Institution of Technology, possessing a staff of barely over two dozen and classes that could be counted on the fingers, it certainly wasn't a shining beacon of faerie civilization. Yet with all the zeal I could muster, I stressed the importance of its discoveries and research to Hoshi as she listened on, her eyes seeming to absorb the information far more than her ears.

"So wait. Explain this to me again. You're a _doctor_, yet you don't know medicine magic?"

"No. I'm not a medical doctor either, as in surgery and pill or needle medications." She gave me a blank look at this comment, her understanding cut short. I sighed, and immediately dove into a thorough lecture on healing methods outside of the magical realm.

She just seemed to be grasping it when she suddenly collapsed on my lap, as if a vacuum had spontaneously deflated her. Her hair spilled out on either side of my thighs, like solidified water peppered with the reflection of the night. "No more tonight, Frank," she complained, her thick lashes shielding those eyes so like mine. "You're getting boring."

"Do you want me to walk you home?"

"No, I think I'll just sleep here."

"But I don't have a—"

"Shhh, Frank, I'm trying to sleep here."

Her delicate fingers curled up underneath her cheek, and she gave a light sigh, already drifting away on my lap. It was all I could do to control the beast looming beneath her head from giving her a pointy wakeup call. Much to my loins dismay, trying to retreat from under her only caused her to stir and moan uncomfortably, urging me to stay still. Already I was a slave to her whim, and fell still as if paralyzed whenever she requested. Ultimately, I was forced to read the nonsense book I leave on my bedstand for insomniac reading (something about channeling your magic for karma), and muster all the willpower in my body to control the peak that threatened to swell beneath her head.

When morning came and the sun slowly nudged her awake, I squeaked something about having to pee and dashed out from underneath her head. Racing to the bathroom, I then tended my own head to a quick stroke-and-squirt until all the tension building from the long night oozed down the toilet bowl in a swirl of sticky white.

Re-entering the bedroom, I was privileged with the sight of her sprawled on the bed, languishing like a goddess. Her smooth skin contrasted sharply with the rough covers pulled firmly across my mattress, all that I could afford on my paltry salary. Head tipped over the side of the bed, her hair made a waterfall onto the ground, spreading out into a deep blue pool at the bottom of my bed. As I made my entrance, her eyes opened halfway and formed an upside-down smile.

"Feel better now?"

The sarcastic tone in her voice implied her knowledge of my stroke session. Blushing the color of my eyes, I cleared my throat loudly.

"Are you hungry?"

"Starved," she commented, sitting up in bed. She inspected the knit purse she carried with her, now significantly emptier. A wave of sorrow spread across her face that threatened to shatter my heart, brittle and vulnerable as it had become. She turned her head over to me, chin settling on her shoulder. "You wouldn't happen to have any … ?"

"No. Maybe some weed, but not that." She sighed heavily, and scooped up a smaller amount of coke than she had shoveled up her nose prior.

After giving a firm snort, she spun around on the bed, throwing her legs off the other side. Her elegant toes just barely brushed the top of the gnarled carpet. Such a fragile beauty seemed unnatural in the basal practicality of my room; her form demanded elegance, screamed for silk wrapped around her shoulders and trailing down her calves. She sent a shiver in my heart that made my budget want to spill out for her, lavishing her with the highest fineries Faerieland offered. Perhaps her mere exoticness intrigued and aroused me—I can't tell.

"Do you want me to make you some breakfast or something?"

"Not until you wash your hands," she snorted. That familiar flush found its way to my face. Her sardonic expression quickly turned to amusement—not sarcastic, but genuine. "You're blushing." Her comment only served to further rogue my face. Her purpose satisfied, she hopped from my bed smoothly, as if each movement flowed through water. With an alien grace, she moved up to me and then past me, pulling her hand softly against my hip as she went. As she walked away, she kept her eyes on me, offering a mysterious smile. "Make me some pancakes, Frank."

I did, but she didn't eat them. Instead she smoked her way through a pack of Luckies in a half an hour and I was left with frozen meals for a week. As she plowed through a pack and I tentatively picked at a pancake (a most loathsome meal—I prefer meat in my breakfast), we talked casually without commitment.

Through our conversation, I slowly began to uncover her nature, seen through the veil of a nebula until then. She had not gone home last night because she had none. She was a free-loader. Up until now, she had mooched room and board off of Wery—but once Wery admitted her engagement to Hoshi, Wery gradually began elbowing her out of the house. It came first with Hoshi's lamps on the curb—then her clocks, posters, and CDs—then her coke and futon. From what I could gather, those essential items still sat lonely in front of Wery's house, unattended and possibly garbage-picked. I offered to help her move her things—not volunteering my house as a final destination—but she declined the offer with a flick of an ash.

We sat in quiet for a moment as I sipped my third cup of coffee. The final cigarette from the chain dangling from her lips, Hoshi raised an eyebrow in my direction. "You drink that stuff black?"

"What other way is there to drink it?"

"With sugar and cream. You know. The normal way."

"And ruin my coffee? I think not."

"So you like that stuff bitter as hell?"

"I look at it like this—if you're brewing coffee, you're brewing something that's 'bitter as hell' anyway. That's what you bargained for. Why try and mask what you get by cream and sugar?"

She moved her head to the right but kept her eyes resting on me, taking a thoughtful and final drag from her cigarette. Still looking at me, she mashed the butt into my table. "You're a strange one, Frank."

"You can afford to be strange when you look like I do."

"Don't start a pity party now."

"I wasn't planning on it." I tipped my head back for the last dredges of my coffee and got up, placing the cup in the sink. I turned on the tap and began cleaning it out with a crud-infested sponge. "You can stay here today if you want, but I'll be gone all day. I have work."

"Where do you work?" she inquired from across the room. She was already up and inspecting the pictures on the wall, flicking away the dust with the back of her fingers.

"Record store. Nothing special, though we've probably got every LP imaginable."

"LP? Like, vinyl? Isn't that dead?"

"Not if we have anything to say about it," I smirked, putting the cup in the drying rack.

"Didn't you say you were a scientist? Or a doctor or something?"

"Yeah, but that doesn't pay the bills. I'll probably be at the lab tonight, though."

Before I knew what was happening, she was behind me, practically on her knees with excitement.

"You absolutely _have_ to let me come!"

"No can do," I said, shaking my head. I walked nonchalantly to my bedroom, shutting and locking the door behind me for privacy. Such a concept eluded Hoshi. I could barely get my shirt off before she came bursting through the door, a puff of magic succeeding her. A vague annoyance flittered through my mind—I had ordered those locks magic-proof—before I could react to her nearly tackling me to the ground in her zeal.

"You have to take me!" she insisted again.

I grasped to the bed for support, pulling myself to my feet. She clung to my ankles, desperate, and giving me the most pathetic and heart-wrenching look ever made. My resolve to stay silent and solid melted behind me, but I couldn't satisfy her demands so easily.

"Look, it's not so easy. We work with dangerous chemicals, and we can't have innocents just wandering around. What if you accidentally broke something? Not only would they be pissed and it all be on my ass, what if it burned you? What if you got hurt? They have some terrible brews in there … I've seen them do—"

She cut me off as women do so masterfully—she launched herself onto my torso, spreading me backwards onto the bed, and pressed her mouth down against mine, my cheeks held captive by her palms. It was the kiss of the innocent, the inexperienced—closed mouth yet demanding, her lips laced with ulterior motives. Her scent filled my nose, of my cheap cigarettes, coke and something sweeter yet cold—the scent of the farthest reaches of space, a musk that couldn't be bottled.

She held me in that position, hands useless and mouth sealed, for what seemed like hours; stupid and shocked, I held my breath, nearly asphyxiated by my first kiss with her. That seemed to be how our relationship always progressed.

Breathless, she released me, panting heavily and lustily. I stared at her, stunned and immobile. Without intention, my hand floated to her cheek, cupping it curiously. She grasped it hungrily, pressing her lips against my fingers. With her eyes focused solely on me, she uttered a plea to the cracks of my fingers. "Please?"

How to resist a presence like hers? It was impossible. Feigning distaste, I pushed her off of me, but complied to her demands with a mask of reluctance. As soon as I bowed to her whims, she skipped out of the room lightly, leaving me to change as well as agonize alone over the sincerity of her kiss.


	2. Baggage

The trip to the record store (affectionately named 'Fuck You, Ms. Man') was relatively uneventful, though Hoshi nearly pissed herself over my ride. Most faeries are accustomed to flying places, naturally, but with my unusually petite wings for my body frame, my flight was limited to glides and short, chicken-like sprints. To compensate for this, the science department had helped me create a vehicle that ran on clouds, sunshine, and rainbows (I kid you not), a commodity in vast quantities in Faerieland. The vehicle was something like those human-made Vespas, only instead of running on pavement, it took to the air.

"You're shitting me," Hoshi said when I headed towards the bike instead of taking flight.

"Nope." I reached into the passenger compartment for the helmet, slinging the headstrap over my finger. I held it out to her. "Put this on. You're gonna need it for a first-timer."

Hoshi approached the Moltenore (for that's what we had named the bike, making it live up to its name by applying lamely ironic flame decals) as if it were a wild beast she sought to tame. I slipped onto the driver's seat and jammed the key into the ignition, starting her up with a loud snap and a cough from her engine. Hoshi flew back timidly at this, unused to motor explosions.

"What is it?"

"We call it the Moltenore. It's a vehicle. Kind of like the Fae downtown, only without all the motion sickness." The Fae was our public transportation, primarily used by graying faeries with weakened wings or those of extreme laziness. The Fae was a semi-organic machine with wings affixed to each car, allowing it to fly while simultaneously making for a nauseating ride. Fittingly, puke bags were affixed to the bottom of each seat.

"It only seats two."

"Yeah, usually only one, but I hooked up the passenger cart for Jew yesterday. She was too wasted to fly home."

"Jew?"

"Jhudora." 'Jew' was a common and affectionate nickname for Jhudora at the time, while she was still in her young, impressionable punk phase. Upon the pronunciation of that name, though, Hoshi's face turned several shades paler and twisted into an unfittingly ugly grimace. She seemed even less likely to hop into the cab next to me.

"You know … you know Jhudora?"

"Of course I do, she's my co-worker. Coke dealer too, you would like her." As she faked vomiting motions, I smiled curtly. "Of course, you seem to already have had an experience with her."

"She's my ex-girlfriend." My stomach dropped down the elevator shaft of my intestines.

"She's your _what_?"

"Ex-girlfriend."

"Oh, sweet shit. You're kidding me, right?"

"I really wish I was."

"Hoshi, that bitch's slept with everyone."

"That's why I broke up with her."

"You get yourself checked for STDs?"

"No."

"Word from the wise—you might want to get that looked into," I advised, giving her a worried look. "Don't worry about it, though. We can probably perform it on you at the lab." This wasn't entirely true, but thanks to the look Hoshi was giving me, I would've lied to the Faerie Queen to make her feel better. Such a tragic look on such a beautiful face was invariably heartbreaking. "You still want to come with?"

"Yeah. It's fine." The phrase reeked of falsity.

Hoshi nodded numbly, finally daring to approach the Moltenore. Perhaps she had given up on her fears in the face of a possible genital disease—a fate, perhaps for her, worse than death on a synthetic flying machine. Without speaking, she took the helmet from my hands and mashed it down on her head, crumpling the waves of her hair distressingly beneath it.

I revved from the handlebars and took off, the wheels treading hard against the thick sidewalk of clouds before sputtering and angling up from the ground. I dug into the accelerator and the Moltenore took flight, thrusting itself high above my house.

There's one thing about the Moltenore—it gives a faerie a whole new perspective on flying. Faeries often forget what a gift they have, born with wings, a gift for which the groundbound grow green with envy. Flying as transportation, for faeries, is so much like a non-pleasurable walk in the park. It requires strength and endurance, and for the few faeries out of shape, flying is a laborious, unseemly task. Even those gifted with fitness and a love for exercise often grow weary of flying, the task now so commonplace and worn of charm.

That's the biggest problem with the faerie population, in my opinion: how they fail to stop gazing groundward after their first trial flights. Unlike them, I've never had the opportunity to grow accustomed to flight and have its gimmick rubbed thin in weeks of a fledgling flight. They fail to register the grandeur of laughing at gravity, feet dangling like hot air balloon ropes.

With the Moltenore, I was given the skill to fly without the taxing nature, and thusly the ability to revel in my distance from the ground, string clipped in liberation. From the vantage of my marvelous machine, the sight of tiny faerie heads beneath my feet never fell out of fashion. And Hoshi, gazing down from the side of her car with jaw unlocked in awe, was now stripping back those assumptions of flying ingrained in her memories, seeing sky for the first time.

We flew in an understanding silence, only the Moltenore making a sound of a soft, Kadotie purr. Hoshi seemed in perfect peace until we gently landed in front of Fuck You, Ms. Man, wherein an itching seemed to overtake her bones.

She shed the helmet automatically, throwing in my barely-ready arms. Jumping out of the car, she gave a quick look around, her nostrils flaring as if to smell the air for danger. Her red eyes were blinking like ambulance signals, the threat of death in the air.

"I have to go," she declared shortly, and didn't even wait for my response before turning her back to leave. I abandoned the Moltenore momentarily in need of an explanation.

"Wait, _wait_, Hoshi. You can't just _leave_ me like this. Where're you going?"

"Far, far away from this … this aura."

"What aura? Look, Hoshi, it's fine if you want to scram, if it's about Jew. My shift ends at six, Jew gets off a little bit earlier than that—even if she doesn't, I'll stick around. You'll meet me here, right? Then you can see the lab." I threw out my last bargaining chip, a pawn I had no real right to deal.

"So, Frankenstein—is this your new _girl_friend?"

At that point, I felt every muscle in my neck tighten in a mix of aggravation and fear of being caught with Jew's ex. I turned around gradually to see Jhudora in the doorway, her body leaned against one side of the frame and one green-polished hand set against the opposite.

Later in life, I would've burst out laughing at her appearance—at that point, Jhudora was religiously committed to gutterpunk fashion, and wore it with a heightened obnoxiousness. Her hair was cut into a female hawk with one side of her bangs purple and the other a noxious green; a strip of hair from her forehead to her spine stood erect care of Aquanet and Elmer's. She wore hooked-lace boots that came to her ankles and were beaten up at the toes, and a tartan skirt that barely covered her privates. Wrapped around her shoulders was a self-studded shrug that boasted patches of flagrant name-dropping, with an army-printed tank top containing her breasts beneath.

For the time being, though, Jhudora seemed like a femme fatale: a force of a dark faerie that was not to be trifled with.

Because I was an ass hole with suicidal tendencies, I trifled with her anyway.

"Why, yes it is, my precious Jew bag. And what, pray tell, would that have to do with you?"

Jhudora snorted, giving Hoshi a thorough look over with her eyes. "I never figured you had a taste for damaged goods, Frankly," Jhudora replied, directing her sentence towards Hoshi. It was laced with insult. Hoshi didn't reply—she seemed to have been petrified in place, paralyzed by a former flame.

"Of course I do, Jew-das. Why do you think I fucked you last Friday?" I replied with all the saccharine in the world.

Jhudora raised her lip to reveal a crooked fang. "Don't get smart with me, Frank."

"That's kind of easy to do with faeries with an IQ of fence poles. But don't worry, I'll dumb it down." I pretended to look into the air innocently, placing a finger mockingly on my bottom lip. "Oh by the way, Jew-dy, do you think I should consult my doctor about the burning sensation I get when I pee now?"

"Frankenfurter, do you like your penis?" Jhudora asked calmly.

"It has its moments. Why?"

"Because if you don't _shut the fuck up_, I'll be permanently detaching you from it." Jhudora curled her fingers into a semi-fist, her nails seeming to grow three inches instantly.

"Stop it!" demanded Hoshi, suddenly breaking from her stony fate. Jhudora and I both looked over to her unexpectedly—the fight had quickly grown between Jhudora and me, and had no real air of seriousness to it anymore. With Hoshi re-involved, however, Jhudora honest spite re-entered to the conversation.

"Well, I guess you and the half-breed should go start making you crack babies now. I'll give you two some privacy," snarled Jhudora, flashing her fangs at me threateningly. "Oh, and Hoshi, honey? Please don't leave your baggage lying around here." With that, Jhudora whisked back into Fuck You, Ms. Man and slammed the door behind her, sending the "Open" sign swinging back and forth.

I gave a low whistle as I turned towards Hoshi. "Shit … I'm glad _I'm_ not Jew's ex-girlfriend."

"You should've seen her when I broke up with her."

"I can only imagine." There was a brief pause as I considered whether to ask her something. Finally, I gave in to temptation. "Do you mind telling me what she meant by half-breed?"

"Oh, that?" Hoshi smirked. "Not only is Jhudora a prize-winner in personality, she's also an elementist."

"And that concerns you … why?"

"I'm half-light, half-dark. I like to think of myself as milk chocolate."

"I thought you said you were … ?" I pointed towards the sky.

"Nah, that's just what I like to tell people when I'm high. Speaking of which …"

"Nope. I don't know any other dealers of that besides Jhudora." A lie made for her health's benefit. Her face fell momentarily, but I guarded myself against sympathy for her disappointment.

"Ah well. I guess I'll talk to Wery today then." She looked warily towards the door of the record store. "You still have to work today?"

"It's not as bad as it looks. She should be calming herself right now." I heard a crash from inside—the familiar sound of vinyl-against-glass. "Yep, there she goes right now."

"As long as she doesn't kill you."

"She won't kill me. She hasn't fucked me yet."

"I thought you said--?"

"It's a face-off, Hoshi. You say anything you have to."

"Oh." She chewed on this for a moment, a flicker of nearly let-down in her eyes. Something lingered on her lips before her departure—she bit at them, and then looked back at me. "Just out of curiosity, what element are you? Earth?"

"You say that because of my wings?"

"Pretty much."

"I'm going to disappoint you. I'm a light faerie."

"No shit?"

"No shit at all. I'm pure, though, so Jhudora has less to bitch about at me. Plus the fact that she still thinks I'm an earth faerie."

"Hmph." A cross between a smirk and a laugh slipped from Hoshi's lips. "You have any more cigarettes I can bum?"

"Only at home."

"Damn. I guess I'll see you later then."

I didn't say good-bye—I was too focused on watching her leave, the retreating sway of her hips. Unlike most faeries, she didn't immediately leap to the air for flight—she bided her time on the ground, sinking her feet into the cloud before springing into the air, her wings a blur behind her. Curious too was the fact no residual magic dust flaked from her wings as they moved—even mine, small and virtually useless, emitted particles usable for minor spells.

While I was glad Hoshi's upset mood had evaporated, I could only imagine what Jhudora had in store for me as soon as I entered the store. Still, I knew I would be in for a harsher whipping if I skipped out on my shift, so I reluctantly turned back to the door and snuck inside.

Jhudora's mood had lightened once I got inside, but that hardly prevented her from hurling a shard of a vinyl in my direction. I nearly gave her a tonguelashing for such a blatant waste of merchandise (despite her being my supervisor), but then she informed me that the LP had been of The Beatles, and we both agreed it was for the best.

Jhudora's rage appeased, my shift went fairly smoothly with an encouraging lack of customers. Those that dared interlope on our domain were thrown to the door with pretentious jabs at their music taste, unless their eyes first wandered to what we deemed a worthy album. That ended up being all of one faeries—four others were turned away with scorn and elitist snipes.

Between our games with customers, I gently eased Jhudora onto the subject of Hoshi. While it involved several more smashed albums (Abbey Road, The White Album, and Sergeant Pepper respectively), I managed to squeeze valuable information out of her. From Jhudora, I gathered that a) Hoshi was an avid coke user care of none other than Jew-dy herself; b) while Hoshi had no official home, when she wasn't crashing at a friend's pad she snuck to and slept at the Faerie Queen's telescope; and c) rumors had been circulating that she had some kind of a destiny to fulfill, as if she were a savior for faeriekind.

"That's fucking ludicrous," I insisted at the final comment, taking a hit from that pipe we had started. So few people came into our store, either still scarred from a previous humiliation or overlooking the sign in its obscurity, that we could afford to really relax. "If she's some sort of savior, why isn't the Faerie Queen looking over her? Why's she out snorting coke?"

"Who says the Faerie Queen isn't looking over her? She doesn't do her own work of course—not only is she royalty, she's already a trillion years old, and she's gonna give up her seat once she actually has a kid. She's got a fucking million spies. They could be watching us right now, waiting for an excuse to kill us."

"Shit, _some_body's had one too many tokes."

"Shut up and pass me that pipe."

Other than the hoax I assumed Jhudora had created right at that moment, my shift was uneventful, besides some slow hippie dancing with Jhudora to the Grateful Dead. (Our music taste declined drastically when we were high.) Once Jhudora and I had chased all of the collar, multi-colored bears out the front door, I managed to scam Jhudora out of the rest of her shift as well. Admittedly, it wasn't that hard—closing at seven was a laborious task, and more often than not we played poker to determine who would be the unlucky employee. As record store employees are never the brightest crayons in the box, a simple cheating system had guaranteed me a clean record until now. However, Jhudora wasn't going to let me go down willingly.

"No way, Franky. We're playing for tonight, whether I win or lose. I gotta feeling the stars are in my favor."

I rearranged the constellations in her favor that night, purposefully drawing a hand of shit and putting a straight flush in her green-clawed hand. I bit my tongue to prevent myself from exposing my fraud as she flaunted her winning hand in my face. Even if we had been playing poker for real, I would've been out as soon as she picked up her cards. Her poker face was a mixture of giggles and squeals of delight with a bit of brow-furrowing tucked in depending on how stoned she was.

Jhudora finished her gloating after a period of ten minutes, and then lost interest. Packing up the makeshift pharmacy she laid out under the cash register every morning to get her through the day, she checked the money box and pulled out a few bills, muttering something about a night on the town. I bade her farewell and she hardly gave me a gesture of the hand for good-bye, humming an inaudible tune in her head.

Hoshi seemed to appear moments after Jhudora's exit, pushing her face against the window goofily. Her fine features mashed against the glass, and she blew at her mouth, inflating her cheeks to obese proportions. The door was open, but chivalry hadn't entirely died for me yet, so I jumped over the counter and opened the door. She stumbled in, falling into my arms, smelling the soft, cancerous smell of cigarettes and coke.

"Where've you been, Hosh?"

"Around," she commented, rubbing at her nose and giving a hard sniff. I noticed the knit bag by her side had regained its depth. "You said you'd show me around the lab, right?" she insisted, grinding at her eyes with a knuckle. This only served to further the pale blue lines streaking her eyes, indicating a bloodshot condition.

"Yeah, I d—"

"Frank, you smell like weed."

"It's just the record store." This was partially true; like a headshop without bong or bubbler, Fuck You Ms. Man retained the characteristic smell of marijuana, trapped in the cardboard of old gnomer LPs.

"Sure," Hoshi snorted incredulously. "Anyway, let's go."

"I have to close up shop."

"Do it quick. I'll be in the Moltenore."

She exited without an offer for help—I was briefly annoyed, but soon lost myself in taking stock of the albums and the minimal cash in the register. The smell of greenbacks never failed to have an aphrodisiac effect on me, sending almost hypnotic shivers through my nerves. Though from a young age we are taught greed's negative effects, the tempting, golden apple of money always dangles before us so sumptuously. Up until that point, I had been virtuous in keeping our profits in tact—there were so little that it was pointless to nab them anyway.

But now a sinister something whispered inside of me, pushing me to pocket the money. I had heard that voice before—a voice spoken with a forked tongue and bad intentions that caressed my inner ear. It appeared in dreams—dreams of a distant future shrouded in dark nebulas as in a clouded crystal ball. Its voice was quiet now, only the mangled voice of a child that committed petty crimes of forgery and five-finger discounts. Yet deep in the future I could hear its resounding echo played behind that obscuring curtain, played loud like an imperial march of French horns.

For now, I took the cash. It was only a few crumpled bills, but my heart felt a burden lifted from that hoarse consciousness with the money nestled in my pocket. I reasoned that I needed the money anyway—I hadn't had a decent meal in ages, and Hoshi certainly deserved one as well. In the present, these convoluted means led to a brighter end; yet as I groped towards the future, I could only wonder if upcoming intentions.

Calmed, I grabbed the key and slid out the door, shutting off the lights and closing the door behind me. Hoshi sat half-asleep in the car of the Moltenore, her eyelids lifting slightly at my arrival.

"Let's go, Frankly," she murmured, strung out and mellow.

"Just Frank is fine, really," I insisted, throwing a leg over the bike.

"Dr. Frank?" asked Hoshi, slightly muffled by the cracking start of the Moltenore.

"Nah, you've got to put the doctor before a surname."

"Faeries don't have surnames. That's reserved for pets."

"Maybe so," I shrugged, lifting the Moltenore into the air. Once we had reached a decent cruising speed, I reached into my pocket again—my hands grazed past the bills to a pack of crushed cigarettes and matches, just barely usable for smoking. I lit up as Hoshi lounged, myself with one hand on the steering bars. "What do you think about Dr. Sloth?"

Hoshi lifted one eyelid, hardly hearing me. "What?"

"Dr. Sloth. For a name and all."

"Like from your band?"

"Yeah."

Hoshi held up her hands, as if framing the name against lights. She spoke in a deep, smoky voice with an official twinge. "Doctor Frank Sloth, Ph. D." Her nose crumpled in distaste after saying it. "I don't like it. It hurts the tongue."

" 'Frank' is always going to sound like a swear word to faeries."

"It's not just that. It gives me this … creepy feeling. Like there's worms in my stomach."

"You're just high, I think it's good."

"You're not going to refer to yourself as that from now on, are you?"

"Oh, hell no. Though I may have it plaqued in gold on my desk," I replied sarcastically.

"Frank," mumbled Hoshi, tracing the name in cursive in the air. She repeated it several times before cringing again. "Who _gave_ you that name?"

"Orphanage."

"They didn't love you much, did they?"

"I was a runty boy faerie. What do you think?"

"I'm going to rename you."

"Oh?" I answered with a roll of my eyes.

"Yeah. But not a real name. We've gotta have code names, like spy operatives."

"God, now I _know_ you're high."

"Listen to me! So I'm gonna be … hmm … I'm gon-na-be … I've got it!" She pointed up to the heavens, as if using them for evidence. "I'm going to be the Space Faerie, savior of Neopia, and live on the moon."

"Cooookehead."

"Shut up, I'm still thinking of yours. Wait, wait, I've got it! The Happiness Faerie!"

"What the fuck?"

"It's supposed to be ironic."

"Oh, _I _see. And where do I live?"

"In the aeroplane over the sea."

"Laymans terms, Space Faerie."

"In a space ship circling Neopia. See, because the Happiness Faerie's a scientist, right? And we have grand visits every so often, where we invite each other to dinner."

"Ahhh, _I_ see. Do we ever fuck on these occasions?"

"Only when the moon is full."

"Then I'm gonna love months with blue moons."

I continued to courteously listen to Hoshi's inane ramblings until we landed at the lab. While I parked the Moltenore, Hoshi hopped onto the ground and smeared a portion of powder against her nose.


	3. Scum

The institute was an unimpressive building. All architectural feats had been concentrated in faerie city, around structures that centered on magical pursuits. The institute had been built as an afterthought, science entirely subordinate to the supernatural. It was a pragmatic building, shaped like a concrete box, and weighed heavily into the cloud around it. We used to joke about how the building was built to eventually fall from Faerieland to the infertile, hostile habitat below—until the physics majors inspected the building's designs and found that this was eerily possible if we hadn't built supports in time.

Only a few lights were on—while experiments were typically conducted at night, those feats were reserved for the weekends, when everyone could attend. I came on weekdays mostly for research—to tear through dusty, enormous volumes of our few ancestors that dared to walk the unbeaten path of technology. I was currently working on a bio-engineering project that we would be testing on Feepits in a few weeks, and it was my job to make sure I had the procedure laid out and tweaked the formula enough to ensure the Feepits a minimal amount of harm.

I explained this to Hoshi as I led her inside, after convincing her to leave her knit bag locked away in the Moltenore's trunk. She seemed appalled that we should be testing on Feepits, but as I gently elaborated that Feepits regenerated themselves easily and that we only picked Feepits from the pound, giving them an excellent home thereafter, Hoshi seemed less stricken. Still, once I had swiped my way past security and had made it to the Feepit cages, she demanded that I let one of the speckled creatures out so she could hold it. I let her have to her pick, and she pointed to a plump one with yellow eyes, half-awake from our entrance.

While she coddled the Feepit with infant noises, I guided her down a maze of corridors until I finally arrived at my portion of the lab. I urged Hoshi into gloves and a lab coat that were hanging on the hook outside the door while she stayed focused on the Feepit, forcing myself to practically suit her up manually. Once I had placed my lab coat on as well, I opened the door, a blast of steam hitting me as soon as I opened it.

With Hoshi trailing behind me, a center of my brain immediately kicked into seriousness. Science research, especially around chemicals, had nothing childish about it. If a chemical was spilled on skin, said skin risked immediate and permanent injury—that was no laughing matter. But it wasn't just the inherent danger that lurked in the glass beakers that turned lightheartedness to stone. Science was something of a religion to me, and in this context the lab became my temple, a place of somber and devout occasions.

"Frank, I can't see anything in here. Why is it so foggy?" Hoshi complained from behind. I could feel her hand fanning through the smoke behind me, trying to forge a clear path. The Feepit in her hands made horrible squealing noises and I grimaced—I had never had affection for those little annoyances.

"It's supposed to be. This protects some of the chemicals from reacting with oxygen too quickly," I replied, moving my way to the chemical safe in the back. I moved so naturally through the smoke, having memorized the lab after years of navigating it, that at first I was frustrated at Hoshi's inability to keep up with me. Finally, after realizing that it was her first time through the shrouded maze, I slowed my pace adequate enough for her to keep up.

As I opened the safe with a six-number code, I warned Hoshi not to touch anything she saw, even if I was handling it. She nodded solemnly—she seemed to sense the critical nature of the chemicals I handled even without my explaining their hazardous nature. The fact that many of them came in containers labeled with a grim looking skull on them certainly helped to deter her.

The main creation I was working on was contained in a small box with a number of test tubes in them. Each test tube housed a small portion of the chemical, identical in each. A vat of this compound was contained elsewhere if I needed any for further testing, but to use more would be unnecessary and amateur. The very essence of science was not to use excessive quantities—only the prescribed amount in the written experiment was to be used.

Thankfully for Hoshi, this was not a day where Feepits were prepared for the experiment. (They were still undergoing a rigorous diet and exercise program, however, to get them in various amounts of health for a certain independent variable. The one Hoshi held was the Feepit kept purposefully out of shape and regularly stuffed with food; this explained its chubby, cuddly nature.) Instead, I was adding a new element to the mixture today to see how it reacted. All things accounted for, the hypothesis was that the addition of this element would only created a catalyst for the chemical, making the solution's components mix faster. This would do wonders for the experiment, as it had been calculated that the solution's components would take months to mature and blend completely; with the added catalyst, the solution could be ready in half that time.

When Hoshi inquired as to how this potion was to affect her now-beloved Feepit, I explained—while multi-tasking to add the catalyst, observe its reaction and carefully document it qualitatively—that it was a type of steroid, meant to increase magical abilities. Feepits were distinctly magicless creatures, despite being inhabitants of Faerieland's mountains. If the steroid worked correctly, the Feepit would be granted powers that would enable it to more readily access food, teleport from danger, and possibly fly.

"We've been working some kinks out of it, though," I elaborated, squinting at the slight foam forming at the brim of one of the test tubes. "We're still trying to find how to translate physical steroids into magical—if it can be done at all. In theory, this chemical should work … but many things work in theory that are absolutely ridiculous. Like the 'we can't move anywhere' theory."

"What's that?"

"Basically, it postulates that we shouldn't be able to move, for to get to one place to another, you have to walk half the distance, then half the distance of that—and you could, theoretically, always get half the distance, but never actually achieve the specified distance. But clearly this isn't true."

I explained this flippantly, and Hoshi stared at me strangely, apparently not following. I sighed loudly. "I'll help you through it later. Right now, I've got to focus on this."

Thankfully, Hoshi was more than willing to be part of a makeshift audience of her and the Feepit. I labored under their gaze, feeling a sort of power in their presence; they were fascinated by the slightest bursts of gas and responded with applause, whether it was an appropriate burst or not. There was a perverted sense of superiority that overcame me in front of the, a wizard of a distinctly different sort. Their ignorance was a tool they placed in my hand every time they admitted the holes in their knowledge—and it was impossible for me to not peek through these peep holes without a sensation of dominance, reveling the knots I could wrest from their control.

My performance soon ended, though, and I placed the test tubes back in the safe, twirling the combination lock as a sort of garnish to the end of my show. An unfortunate dumb grin now reigned over Hoshi's face, the Feepit dancing around her feet having escaped her arms. I rolled my eyes and picked up the Feepit by the scruff, immediately gaining Hoshi on my tail in protest as I walked to put the Feepit back in its cage.

"Frank, no! I want to keep him!"

"Sorry," I consoled, shoving the furball behind bars with a protesting 'Feep!' "He's a man committed to science."

"More like a _prisoner_ of science!" moaned Hoshi, poking at her Feepit friend from behind the bars.

"Look," I groaned, exiting the door. Hoshi trailed after me, still complaining about the Feepit's captive status. I took of my labcoat, goggles, and gloves, hanging them on the hook, instructing Hoshi to do the same. "It's not my fault that Mr. Feepits decided to go into the net when we needed test subjects. And do you really want to take care of Feepits? They shed everywhere."

"Yes," pouted Hoshi.

"You just want a pet with undying love."

"What's so wrong with that?" threw back Hoshi.

"It's so insincere! If something's _bred_ to love you, then it's got nothing to do with free will." This concept seemed to fly straight over Hoshi's head as well, and I gave another aggravated sigh. "Look, I've got a Meepit at home. You can play with that if you want."

"You do!" Hoshi's eyes momentarily lit up with delight, then faded to a confused glow. "What's a Meepit?"

"It's kind of like a Feepit, only it's got shorter, pink fur and doesn't shed."

"Why didn't I see it this morning?"

"They're nocturnal."

"Where do they come from?"

"I'm not sure, actually. He just sort of showed up at my stoop one day, and scrambled in my house. There's not much you can do once he's inside. They've got these weird eyes … kinda eerie, actually. They can hypnotize people if they want to—maybe that's why I started feeding him. But watch out for that."

"I can't wait to meet him."

"Don't get too excited."

Our fly home was relatively uneventful, though Hoshi kept obsessing over the Feepit, demanding that I let her visit it again. I lied in compliance to quiet her. After that was capped off with a strategic fib, she began complaining about how there was nothing to do tonight. I admitted to her that I often stayed in to read—declining to mention that's when Meep emerged to nervously sit in my lap—but the coming Friday Kasey and the Sloths had a show. She immediately burst into peals of excitement, demanding to know which venue and for me to take her there. I told her I would take her there on Friday, but for the time being I was staying in.

I ignored her pleas as we landed at my house, parking the Moltenore. As I opened the door, I gently informed her that if she had no desire to participate in my nighttime relaxation rituals, she could wander Faerie City herself—I wasn't her master, after all. She took sensitively to this comment, and told me that I could stick my boring head in a few choice locations before storming off. I was more amused than insulted by her coarse language; it seemed so ludicrous coming from her perpetually moistened lips—barbs tumbling from an angel's mouth.

My homecoming was announced by Meep standing directly behind the front door, staring at me sideways with a single eye. While I was never positive of what this intense expression was meant to communicate, it always compelled me to throw some cereal into Meep's feeding bowl and curl into bed with a sedative book. This I did promptly upon entering the house, shedding my clothing to my boxers and I crawled into bed.

An interim passed where the house was creepily silent, and then Meep would nose open the door and deposit its body in my lap. Despite his petite size, Meep always weighed very heavily on my lap, and nose urgently at the pages of whatever I happened to be reading. The conscious gesture was a hybrid of cute and creepy, and it made me wonder whether those unblinking eyes housed a flurry of thought behind them. Yet even when I offered Meep the pages for viewing, he quickly fell asleep before them, as if instantly bored.

Once Meep had fallen asleep and I had eased him off my lap to a pillow, I finally had no witnesses. Sneaking to my record player, I slipped a London Calling LP onto the turn table and set on the needle. Cranking up the volume, I abandoned intellectual pursuits and head-banged to guilty pleasure until fatigue set in.

The next morning I awoke with hair in my mouth.

Coughing it out in alarm, I sat up straight in bed, my back stiff in shock. Beside me lay Hoshi, stinking of beer and Marlboros. Meep cuddled himself on my hipbone, and upon my awakening scampered off of my bed and back into darkness.

For a moment, I admired Hoshi in her sleep. Though her hair was disheveled and obscured the finer features of her face, her arms were sleek and tan against the dark colors of her dress. Her silhouette was quietly tempting, fitted and curved where it was proper. Her aroma was slightly foul, and she could use a shower, but all of these qualities were overshadowed by her general radiance. She was one of those rare specimens which cause a man to desire to change himself to fit her whim. At that moment, I would melt my carefully constructed past down into scrap metal for her and ooze myself into whatever new mold she deemed fit.

I rose with fatigue in my limbs, and discreetly slipped London Calling back to the sock drawer from whence it came. I devised a foolproof way to awaken Hoshi without shaking her—I went to the kitchen and began brewing French roast while lighting up a cigarette.

It took her moments to respond. Soon she was pouring herself a cup of coffee while rubbing her face awake. I smiled as she took a seat across from me, grabbing the pack of cigarettes and lighter across from her.

"You sure know how to have a breakfast," I greeted lightly.

"Shhh," she said, putting her finger to her lips after taking a drag. "Hoshi's got a hangover."

"I've got work today," I informed her.

"Ok, but we have to stop by to see Feepit afterwards."

"Fine. Did you meet Meep?"

"Meep who?"

"Never mind."

"But we'll only be stopping at the lab for a second."

"Oh? Why?" I asked, amused that she was ordering me around despite her free-loading in my house. It was assertively charming.

"Because I'm getting your palm read tonight."

The absolute stupidity of the comment made me spit my coffee back into my cup. "_What_?"

"You heard me."

"Please don't tell me you believe in that bullshit. That doesn't even involve magic. It involves vague generalizations that can be over-applied to anyone with so much as a palm."

"Do you believe in anything?" asked Hoshi mildly, taking a long, calm drag from her cigarette.

"I believe in Freud."

"So you want to fuck your mother?"

"More like want to fuck _over_ my mother. She did abandon me at birth."

"Oh Oedipus, I think I'm dying from your absolute charm."

"You know, Freud was about more than fucking your parents. Do ego, id and super-ego mean _anything_ to you?"

"Just that I have an unquenchable thirst for daddy dick."

"Fantastic imagery."

"I try, Frank. I try."

She finished her cigarette, and then announced her intentions to roam Faerie City under the guise of job hunting. I encouraged her fruitlessly until she walked out the door, taking flight as soon as her feet touched the front stoop. I finished a second cup of coffee and smoked three more cigarettes until pushing myself out the door, forcing myself into the daily grind.

The day went by without interruption. My shift was with Illusen, another employee and a frequent one-night stander with Jhudora, so I was relieved of Jhudora's whining about Hoshi. At that time Illusen was a bonafide hippie, complete with permanent dreadlocks, Birkenstocks attached to her feet and clothes made solely of hemp. All Illusen really loved was bongs, brownies, and the occasional lay, and this made the first part of the day a fairly relaxing affair.

I offered to close up shop once again, and although Illusen gave me a few suspicious looks, she didn't further question my motives or demand a game of poker. (This was unfortunate—Illusen was actually fairly challenging to play against.) Hoshi, again, appeared moments later, though brushing elbows with Illusen on the way out.

"She's a looker," commented Hoshi, giving Illusen's backside an approving gaze.

"Eh, I could never get into hippie girls," I disagreed.

"Well, whatever. As a prelude to tonight, tell me when you were born."

"Uh, fifth month, new moon."

"New moon? I thought they never let light faeries be born on the new moon."

"Hey, I can't really defend my parents, 'cause I don't know them."

"Anyway, I think that makes you … ah … Pisces-Aries cusp. Heavy on the Aries, but I can see the Pisces all over you."

"And that means … ?"

"That I should really want to fuck you. Scorpio-Sagittarius cusp, right here."

"I don't believe in destiny. We _make_ fate."

"Whatever, it's fun, and it's on me."

"Where'd you get the money?"

"Your safe."

"How did you--!"

"You have a really shitty locksmith."

Foiled, I decided not to argue with her—a task that always ended fruitlessly, anyhow. Talking rapidly, she guided me out to the Moltenore. Within the flurry of speech, I caught something regarding a job she was investigating. I wished she had a pause button, but in the mean time I had to shake her a little to get her attention.

"Hold the phone there, tiger. Tell me about this job opportunity there."

"Oh that?" she asked innocently. "I just stopped by the Faerie Employment Agency momentarily, and flirted with the front desk woman. She said she might be able to hook me up with something regarding"—she look around as if to check for spies—"employment with the future _faerie queen_!"

"You mean Princess Fyora?"

"Shh! Not so loud! But yeah."

"Whoa … are you sure about that? Did they give you contact information, or an application?"

"I gave them your address."

"Ugh … you sure that's a great idea? I don't think they'll like the fact you fraternize with a disgrace to the faerie population."

"You worry too much, Franklin."

I tried to wring further details out of her, but she wasn't leaking. Finally, I just subscribed to whatever topic she decided to meander upon, which tended to be a prep before we entered into the 'realm of the fantastic.' Being a faerie, it took a lot to amaze me—but Hoshi seemed genuinely excited to get my palm read, despite it not being her own. Her excitement carried all the way to forgetfulness, her intention on visiting Feepit abolished.


	4. Junk

Hoshi ended up directing us to a place that looked as if it had been an opium den in its near past—and perhaps still functioned as one later at night. Beads substituted doorways once we went inside, and incense crept into every corner of the room. A faerie draped in scented ropes and wooden beads awaited us at a front desk, clacking her nails on the table. She was pale in color, nearly ice blue, with a point of blue on her forehead. Her black hair was pulled back into a firm bun, decorated by a number of hair items.

"Hoshiya—how wonderful to see you," purred the mystic faerie, her tone trying to be warm but coming out like ice crystals. Her voice had an exotic accent, but it was from an improper region to constitute a mystic faerie—more Eskimo than Brazilian. I withdrew slightly, but Hoshi surged forwards, bubbling with excitement.

"Taelia, it's great to see you. How's business been?"

"Ok, I suppose," Taelia whispered, the smoke of winter seeming to slip from her lips. "A bit slow, but I have been saving for my trip up to the mountain."

"Oh! How's that coming along? Are you having a house constructed there?"

"Not yet … the funds are too short for that." Taelia grimaced, and then her black-painted lips split into a frigid smile. Her teeth were as white as snow yet uneven, like icicles dripping from a window pane. "Perhaps I will travel there and build one myself." As Hoshi contributed laughter, Taelia's face quickly screwed into one of business—supernatural business. "What are you here for today, young faerie? And who is your companion?" She gestured to me with a hint of disdain.

"Taelia, this is Dr. Frank Sloth." Hoshi seemed to try to talk around my full title, as if it would not fit her windpipe. "Sloth, Taelia."

"Pleasure," I said, holding out my hand for courtesy. She took it sharply—a chill ran up my arm from the dry, anemic feel of her hand. I tried to release her hand, but she clutched mine like a tongue affixing to a frozen pole. She pulled me forward and stared me straight in the eye, forgetting etiquette.

"You …" That cold steam flowed from her lips, and her cold blue eyes narrowed. The nails of her free hand began to tickle between my knuckles, and I swallowed nervously. A cloudy gloss was overcoming her eyes, and she looked at me as if in a trance. "You … are an interesting one."

"Please stop throttling my hand," I insisted, jerking it away. Hoshi touched me on the shoulder, a welcome surge of warmth.

"Frank, don't be difficult. Taelia's a qualified psychic."

"Maybe a qualified _psycho_ …" I mumbled. Taelia smirked at me.

"Ah, a man of science … a rare and skeptical treat." She jolted up from her seat, as if a rod had suddenly been thrust up her spine. Taelia was distinctly unlike my vision of a psychic—she did not flow through the cosmos but rather marched through it, cold and precise. "Come." She gestured to use with one finger to follow us into the back room, hidden by an elaborate shroud of glass beads.

Hoshi went first, and I after her, cautiously. Inside was a round wooden table with a clear crystal sphere in the middle, supported by an elaborate metal sculpture. The walls were draped with curtains made with a thick material, interwoven with golden thread. It was sumptuous and so unlike Taelia, who was strictly a chilling beauty. Taelia immediately dimmed the lights, as if she recognized the uncomfortable dichotomy between the room and her presence.

Taelia directed us to sit around the table on provided cushions, and we complied. She sat on a slightly elevated bench, giving her a falsely superior presence. When she waved her hand over the globe, a smoky light came from inside of it, illuminating her face in a sickly fashion.

"I thought you said this was a palm reading," I whispered to Hoshi.

"Madame Taelia does whatever reading she feels you require," Hoshi whispered back, taking on a certain formality.

"And by any chance, does she always do the most expensive procedure?"

"Shh!"

With sufficient silence from my shushing, Taelia began. She instructed me to hold out my hand flat on the table face-up, which I did. She put one hand on top of my hand, her black fingernails tickling the crevices of my palm. Her other hand was placed atop the ball. She closed her eyes, and a guttural hum began to emit from her throat, somewhat like the throaty alto she spoke in. Hoshi and I watched on in stunned silence, although I had to stifle a fit of laughter bubbling in my stomach against how utterly stupid Taelia appeared.

My hysteria was turned off like a spigot as Taelia's eyes opened with a snap, the sound instantly ceasing. She stared directly at me, never letting her eyes wander an inch past.

"Dr. Frank Sloth. Is this your name?"

"Pretty sure." Hoshi elbowed me in the ribs. "Yeah! Jeez, Hoshi. Yeah it is."

"I see your future."

"I bet you do."

"You are shriveled and ugly, and a greenness plagues your person."

"Well, _that_ blows."

"Frank! Be serious!"

"I'm sorry, Hoshi, this is so fucking stupid!"

"SILENCE!" We obeyed. "This one is very brilliant … a beacon of intelligence in a sea of ignorant darkness … but I see … I see this light shifting, turning sinister … the booster jets of a far away ship … a sea full of stars, consuming the light, turning it into a vacuum … terrible, terrible … a voice …." Taelia began to rock back and forth, as if something was physically rising from the crystal ball and into her arm, filling her with an unexplainable terror. Her eyes were flashing open and shut as if in dreams—her body swooned at each word, as if she were pulling something up from her intestines to her lips. "I see … pain … and … suffering … and I see space … so much empty space … !"

She let loose a manic scream then, as if electrified by her globe, attached to it by the arm. With her hand still fixed on the globe, she began to utter curses in a foreign language, incomprehensible yet simultaneously arrestingly familiar. I wanted to laugh with my science-born incredulity, laugh like a haughty skeptic with a pipe stuck in my lips and brush it off as psychosis. Yet objectivity was being rubbed clean by the sheer stock of emotion poured into Taelia's actions; there was such conviction in every sway of her body, each obscene syllable, that something deep inside of me was shaken.

The spectacle seemed to go on for an unnecessary amount of time, and when I had taken my fill, I stood up abruptly and grabbed Taelia by the wrist, jerking her hand off of the ball. Her wailings immediately stopped, and a blankness filled her eyes, as if the burning star that had goaded her to such obnoxious acts had suddenly collapsed. "Stop it," I whispered, silent but serious. "Stop shouting."

"You're a demon, Frank Sloth," she suddenly hissed back, her voice disturbingly serpentine. Exhaust steamed from her mouth, and her turquoise eyes were red around the edges. "A demon, and a plague to Faerieland."

"A demon, huh?" I replied dryly. "Really. You know, you could be more original. Maybe something I _haven't_ a million times from the Faerie Counsel. Demon, abomination, blasphemy, blemish … take your fucking _pick_."

"Don't touch me, you snake!" she shrieked, suddenly pulling away from me. She hissed as she clutched at her wrist as if burned. I looked at her wrist, just barely visible between her white knuckles. Perhaps it was an illusion of the light, but her wrist suddenly seemed scarred, as if all of the flesh had withered from where I touched. I didn't care. If I had some supernatural power, it would be the first time I had ever experienced it—and she had so ignited my temper that pain dealt to her seemed inconsequential—even soothing.

"You know what the problem with you faeries is?" I demanded, my voice low and dark, a tone I had never used before. "You've got this … tendency about you. This inerasable prejudice for the ugly, the different, the unique. Not only will your race never evolve—never improve—because of it, but it makes those you stigmatize worse than they could've been. It's bad enough for a … mutant like me to just be _conscious_ of how terrible, how _repulsive_ I am," I boomed, my teeth clenched. My voice reverberated through the bone, filling the room like an imposing phantom.

"It's even _worse_ having everyone wear an accusing _mirror_ everywhere I go, so I'm only reminded of my deficiency. And you know what?" I leaned forward to her, blocking out the light of the crystal ball from her face. The iridescence now poured on my chin, creeping up my neck so as to make me into a demonic of shadow and light, my eyes caved in deep into my skull. Taelia shrank back into the wall, trying to cover her face with the curtains, but I ripped them from her countenance. I wanted to see her face, see her horrible, screaming reaction to my final statement.

"It's enough to make me kill a man."

That's when Taelia began to sob, warm, gushing tears that split her white cheeks into fountains. It was shocking to see her body produce anything that was warmer than freezing temperature, and took me aback. The heat drained from my body, and left me in the chilly air of the room, making me shiver. I turned to Hoshi with a defeated look, but she too had retreated from me, her face ashen. She scuttled behind me, making sure to keep a meter radius between us, and went behind the table to console Taelia, sitting her down and stroking her hair.

I felt my feet carry me after that, but no sensation of conscious movement. I felt the cold steel of the Moltenore under me, the deep rumblings of its start and hum beneath me, and far away I knew of the tingle of wind against my skin. There was me unlocking the door, and the smell of the brass on my hand, and then my cheek against the couch, scratched by the rough texture. But inside I rang with the hollowness of a tree struck by lightning, its insides dissolved by a burst of revelation.

It was only when Meep jumped onto my lap, a ball of short, soft fur, that I became conscious. He rubbed his tiny nose against my neck, and it tickled slightly. While I hoped to see Hoshi, I knew it was Meep by the tiny purrings, and I turned on my back, picking him up in my hands. I pressed his belly against my face to feel the beat of a living organism, and inhaled his scent as far as it would go in my lungs. Meep cooed a bit, perhaps in consolation, or perhaps in content.

After a while, I placed Meep back on my chest. His belly fur was tangled with my tears, and stained the front of my shirt. I petted him between his two ghostly eyes and managed to choke out a question.

"Am I a killer, Meep?"

Meep was utterly silent in response, staring me straight in the eyes with no wavering glance. In the glassy mirrors of those eyes, I saw a deep darkness staring back at me, and I wondered if it was Meep or me that we condemned without a word.

I went back to smack.

This would be a good time to tell you that I have two phases in my life: the junkie phases and the straight phases. Because of the smack, I'm not sure which phase has dominated my life largely; but in the straight phases, I attended my job regularly, could keep up with my mortgage payments, ate vegan, and smoked a decent amount of cigarettes. I also rarely thought about smack, unless I was depressed.

During my smack periods, I was a delinquent at work and with bills, ate rarely but sat on the pot religiously and smelled like a chimney. (That's what I've been told, at least—I could care less about my smell when I'm shooting the horse.) However, I had a great deal of friends as a junkie, for my house made a convenient shooting gallery for the street bound smack heads.

This time, I wasn't in to being social. I mostly wanted to kill my sexual drive towards Hoshi and the lingering feeling of foreboding. As soon as Hoshi didn't come home from Taelia's, I was on the corners searching for a dealer. As a junkie—even a junkie who's been straight for three years—the smack in your cells jumps whenever you see a dealer, regardless of whether you know her or not. It becomes instinctual—you need to satiate your need, and your body adjusts to satisfy smack's demands.

As soon as I had a needle in my vein shooting warmth deep in my bloodstream, I felt the warm swell of home. I puked a little—it'd been a long time since my last fix—but for the rest of the duration, I sat within a sphere of euphoria and sprawled within microwaved blankets, my chin at my chest.

The days before the show passed with relative quickness, besides when I needed to find another fix. Smack doesn't let you skip doses. In those hours that passed by like salmon downstream, I lounged on the toilet seat for an elusive shit or sat slumped in the chair, enjoying the prolonged ride of pleasure. Meep seemed to understand that something was different—that something had inherently changed in my mannerisms. He quietly retreated from the house and ate elsewhere, though where exactly I'd never know.

It was a few hours before the show that I received a phone call. Well, I picked up the receiver—I'm not sure that counts as receiving it, as I gave my end a long expanse of silence to dwell on.

"Frank? Frank? Frank, are you there? Frank, I know you picked up. Frank, did you forget we have a fucking _show_ tonight? Frank? Frank! It's Mowlia. You better be coming tonight, Frank. Frank! Are you strung out again?"

"No," I lied lowly into the receiver.

"You so are! I can't fucking believe this. I'm coming over."

There seemed to be little time between when I returned the receiver to the cradle to when Mowlia arrived at the door. She knocked furiously a couple of times, compounded by a frantic ringing of the doorbell, and finally let herself in by way of magical lockpicking. I really had to get my locks examined.

Mowlia rudely burst into me on the pot, and pulled me up off the toilet seat. I tried to dump one right there to get my point across, but my intestines had been stopped for days. She pulled up my pants for me (if I hadn't been strung out, a boner would have emerged) and zipped up the fly. Yelling obscenities at me about self-responsibility (she was straight-edge), she demanded to see my music and my keyboards. I gave a shrug, which sent her into another peal of fury. By that time I was already sitting on the chair again, and she was yanking me up again. She was a real shrill ass hole when I was mellowed.

Miraculous, with the power of her forward anti-charm, Mow managed to guilt me out the door, even managing to have me carry my music. (She strapped the keyboard on her back, along with the stand, knowing that it would be dropped—frequently—if I held it.) She found where the Moltenore keys were and shoved the keyboard into the passenger car, practically planting me on the back next to her while she fiddled with the controls. While I gave her a long, serious lecture about how the Moltenore was delicate and shouldn't be toyed with by amateurs, she flew us to the Wet Blanket, a place she often maneuvered the Moltenore to when I was too drugged to do it myself.

By the time we arrived, most of the band had already set up, and Kasey went off on a tirade on me. I wasn't listening to her too thoroughly, as I was slowly coming down from my high, and static was cottonballing in my ears. When I gestured for Kasey to hush, rubbing at my ears gingerly, she was only further enraged.

"Shut it, Kasey, you yelling at him isn't gonna get him any more sober," Paul said bluntly, testing the amp on her guitar. She hit a chord, closed her eyes to determine the pitch, and then grimaced. "Besides, you need to warm up." Though we all knew warming up her vocal chords would do no good to eliminate Kasey's banshee shrieks, it was often a clever tactic to distract her from obnoxiousness.

Yagsria, our bassist with a penchant for silence, helped me on stage while plucking her low strings for tuning. After she plugged my keyboard into an amp, me standing on the seemingly shifting stage, she came up from behind me, idly playing slap bass. She hit me with her tuning pegs lightly, and I turned around as if she had stabbed me. Using a nod as a gesture, she indicated her fingerboard, where the majority of her fingers were dancing serenades. One, however, remained stagnant, holding down what appeared to be a postage stamp. I knew better than a newbie, though.

I slipped the stamp from underneath her fingertip and put it on my tongue, slapping her on the back chummily. "You're my only friend, you know that?"

She smirked, calling my bluff, but walked away with a nod, playing her bass like breathing.

A show is just different on acid. Granted, there's the same energy, and the thrill from having people hear your music—and appreciate it by screaming along, sweating, to the lyrics. But acid turns up the intensity. It's as if there's an extra amp on the stage, and you're plugged in by your spine to it: it heightens your awareness, and the former dimensions of excitement hidden by sobriety have their curtains peeled away. Your artistic ancestors dance in shadows on the wall and encourage you by a shake of the fist. As your fingers test the stability of the keys on the keyboard, pressing them to the depths of hell, fire shoots from the speakers, and the crowd slamdances with Satan.

We were the opener (we were frequently placed in that position for our known energy), which allowed us to get to the core of our music quickly. Kasey's voice came out like distortion on Paul's guitar, and I followed soon after, trailing her with power chords. Paul and Yags came in together, lasers shooting from the pegs on their guitars, and Mow caught up with the beat, her skinny arms like strobe lights against the cymbals.

My parts often only occurred intermittently, unless we came upon the rare slow, meaningful song that required blues-type piano, but after an endless array of shows, most keyboardists learn to bide their time creatively. I sent the crowd into approving screams with handstands and cartwheels between bandmates, barely not knocking them over. My friend acid also aided my imagination, making my ass play the keys during crunchy chords and turned a round of programmed rhythms fashionable.

But it wasn't only the acid and the insane atmosphere that fueled me. Up on stage, I was no longer the outcast faerie, made to smoke in corners and watch socialization from afar. The people in the pit admired me—I was their god on keyboards, pounding out melodies for their debauchery. I showered them from above with my godly grace—and that glowing feeling of superiority overcame me, surging through my veins like a hot shot to the jugular. Among pierced and tattooed warriors, I was an immaculate idol, gilded in tight pants and glasses.

Towards the end of our set, we got our second wind. Previously, we had been slowing down, throwing in a number of piano-and-soulful-lyrics numbers. Kasey hastily grew tired of waxing her soul in minor keys rather than blasting it for an adrenaline rush, and seemed slightly irritated at my desire to add garnishes to normally droll notes. Finally, Kasey proceeded to "The Trumpet Song," one of our most popular yet poorly named (we were not a ska band in the slightest).

Streams of light seemed to pour more intensely down on us from the stage lights, sending waterfalls of illumination across the stage. Every so often, a rainbow would shed itself from Paul's guitar and twirl its way into Kasey's screaming mouth. I played in the higher register of the keyboard to pay tribute to the cherubs that hoisted our music in the air on red ribbons, bonding it eternally into the permanent smoke of the building that slept in the rafters.

And then, in the middle of the song, _she_ appeared. I was pounding out chords, and the crowd was screaming for the final climax, desperate for orgasm. Kasey was milking the crowd for what they were worth, squeezing out all of the excitement into one final burst of sweat. I followed her tunes in a frenzy, always slipping half a step down to accommodate for her pitch problems. Yet all of this was wiped away as a crowd surfer was launched onto the stage, hitting me square in the chest.

The sweat, smoke, and booze on her body served for a unique, tangy smell, but I was not so blind as to fail to recognize the surfer as Hoshi. My bandmates continued their furious jam towards the end as all my attention centered to Hoshi, her features twisting in a Picasso fashion across her face. Though the majority of the crowd was still entranced by my pals gesticulating across the stage, a select few had turned their faces to the budding romance on stage.

"Hoshi!" I croaked, blinking a little. My left hand continued to play the obligatory notes, programmed into my fingers, but my heart had fallen out of it and into Hoshi. Her eyes were bleary with alcohol, but it only served to accent her intensity. She was breathless, and her clothes stuck to her in odd places from sweat, but a bright smile filled her face, flashing shocking white teeth against tan skin.

"Frank," she murmured, smiling drunkenly. Perhaps it was the alcohol in her and the acid in me connecting strangely, but something—maybe a cherub—whispered in my ear that all outbursts were forgiven, and from this conflict so cunningly resolved, something new had bloomed. My hands levitated from the keyboard, and as Kasey split into the final climax, I reached forwards with both hands for her face and kissed her.

A loud cheer went through the crowd—whether for my romantic success or the amazing job of my band mates was unclear. All I was sure of was Hoshi's steaming body against mine and her back falling onto the keyboards, throwing dissonance through the air. With our tongues united as birds spiraling airbound in mating season, the crunching chords were as elegant as algebra, and their piercing melody made sense.

Even when they coaxed us off stage we stayed adhered, social standards unable to restrain the passion that enveloped us. While a band succeeded us and my band mates retreated to the front to peddle merchandise, Hoshi and I remained in the back, continuing to speak the soft, sticky language made mouth-to-mouth.

"I love you," I told her in quiet tones as her lips brushed against my cheek, caressing my collarbone. My voice came with unnatural timidity with that statement, a set of words until then I had reserved for lonely rooms. She looked up from her passion, eyes wandering to mine as if in question of how I could form such a phrase. Finally, she kissed those lips from whence those toxic words came, as if in consolation.

"I really want to fuck you right now," she replied, between hungry bites at my neck.

The acid was beginning to wear thin, and I could feel the crawling flesh and jerking legs of a minor withdrawal from smack blooming inside of me. Much as I had dreamed of her speaking such words, they seemed so deplorable and repulsive at that moment, as if she had just spit bleach in my eyes. Yet another part of me ached for her body against mine in the ultimate act of unity, and a possibility to drown the pangs of withdrawal.

The head in my pants overruled the one screaming warning signs between my temples. With tech crew dashing past us like forgotten props strewn on a set, I unfolded myself for her for the first time. She let me come quietly inside of her, and she trembled minutes later when I made her come to a peak, clutching to me as if she might fall apart. She was absolutely silent in her orgasm, and the secret moans she projected in her fingertips made me want to keep her close in my chest pocket to cherish and cradle at dawn.

We walked out nonchalantly, as if we had not been changed; but as we strode to the Moltenore, there now remained a cord between us that had not been there before: an elastic cord that stretched like glue but connected us at the chest. I put my keyboard in the passenger seat and she nestled her cheek into the bend of my back, her lashes grazing my shirt as we flew.

When we arrived home, we parked the Moltenore and repeated our actions inside, this time tussling amongst the sheets. We relieved ourselves of the excess of shirts and when I buried my face between her breasts, I promised to never harm her. She laughed as if I were a child proclaiming something endearingly naïve, and tousled my hair.

"Frank, it's faerie nature to hurt one another. The hedgehog dilemma."

"The what?"

"The closer we get, the more our spines hurt each other."

But we were spineless in that bed—bodiless, too, submerged into one another. After we made each other's backs touch the ceiling, I sat at the edge of the bed for a smoke; Hoshi laid back on the pillows and took a drag of a clove cigarette, giving her a daintily husky scent.

"So should we be together, Frank?"

"Like as a couple?"

"Yeah. I mean, I've only known you for a week, but you're pretty cute. And I like a smart guy that can make me come." She ashed over the side of the bed.

"What about what Taelia said? Doesn't that make you nervous?"

"Taelia's been wrong before."

"And you don't mind that I'm an occasional junkie?" The words slipped out of my mouth. I couldn't control it—the turkey skin covering my arms prodded it out of me. Hoshi was silent for a moment, rolling her clove in her fingers. Sticking it in her mouth, she then leaned forward across the bed and placed her hands on my shoulders, rubbing them firmly. Placing her cigarette between the joints of her fingers, she whispered smoke into my ears.

"Don't tell me shit like that, Franky. But yeah. Even if you're a smack addict … let's be together."

"So you … love me?"

"Shhh … don't say such dirty words." She massaged my back with a series of kisses, her eyelashes cover over the trail of her lips. We were quiet in our intimacy until she spoke, directing the question to my left shoulder blade. "Did you ever kill a man, Frank?"

"Is this about Taelia?"

"Sort of."

"No. I've never killed anyone. I've gotten into plenty of fights, but the majority of them I've lost anyway."

"Do you … do you think you have the capacity to kill?"

"I have five fingers and a palm. Of course I have the capacity."

"No, not like that. I meant … do you have the mindset?"

"I've never come across that situation, so I couldn't tell you. Hopefully, I never will."

Hoshi looked at me introspectively, seeming to see more of a mirror than her face. She blew out a trail of smoke parallel to my cheekbone, grazing across it gently, and then kissed my earlobe delicately.

"I'm going to bed, Franky. Be along shortly?"

She didn't wait for my answer, reclining back, butting out her cigarette in the ashtray and twisting her body into a comfortable position. I nodded, half hypnotized, and smoked another before retreating to bed next to her, reaching of her body to put out my light in the ashtray. My body was quaking for another shot of heroin, and would likely send me into waves of insomnia, but I was determined to get some rest.

Instead of pulling my arm back to my side, I experimented with putting it over her body, hooking it around her waist. She made no motion to remove my arm, and we fell into our respective subconscious worlds linked in reality, shielding us from the nightmares of our brains.


	5. Biohazard

Hoshi began working for Princess Fyora.

She didn't tell me what exactly her occupation was, and when I bothered her about it, she frowned and confessed as much as she'd love to tell me, faerie law prohibited her from doing so. Being a scientist, curiosity was a natural characteristic, and Hoshi's denial of feeding this need half killed me. I would sometimes pester her at mealtimes, but after a while this gentle chiding grew her irritable, and resulted in a number of unpleasant ends to dinner. I finally gave up on the subject verbally, but quietly this was not the case. When Hoshi was distracted, I would often sort through her things nonchalantly to find some clue of her activities. Much to my chagrin, she left no suspicious items lying around, despite her messy nature.

I wasn't so much interested in Fyora (I saw enough about her on the grocery store headlines) as I was about the actual work Hoshi did. The fact that she insisted on secrecy only made the facts all the more desirable to know, and it agonized me to no end. Still, I didn't want to become an annoyance to Hoshi, so became silent on the subject. Besides, the job seemed to be improving her well-being—her knit bag was left full far more often, she wasn't continuously dumping powder in her nose, and she showered with a decent frequency.

Still, living with her was far from being a hell of hidden information. While guarded about the subject of her job, Hoshi remained an excellent conversationalist, and often I would find us distracted in the middle of a fuck by a sudden idea she had while kissing my neck. (In the moment, this would frustrate me to no end, but in retrospect, it was one of her most endearing qualities—though it made me worry about how much I engaged in her the sack.)

Instead of trying to weasel the information out of her, I entertained her with information on Jhudora, Illusen, or my other co-workers antics, and updated periodically on the status of the Feepit experiment. She was anxious to attend the lab on the day of the first trials and I had negotiated a way to get her in.

In the mean time, we enjoyed each other's company. I had had girlfriends in the past, but they were mostly detached affairs—often the faerie I was with actually had a main partner, and I was their embarrassing action on the side. Having a live-in girlfriend that actually seemed to give a shit was a drastic change—but also a drastic improvement.

We could sleep in endlessly on the weekends without her having to worry about rushing back to her place—we could even stay in bed the whole day and wait until the next one arrived. Laundry became a secret language between the two of us, where we would veil our faces like children playing maidens with the shirts straight from the dryer, still warm and rose-scented. We went out for dinner occasionally, but mostly we spent those hours cooking together, indulging in the occasional food fight or feeding each other directly and sensually from the ladle. Candle light dinners became a ritual on Friday, where we would both take a breath from our jobs and lives to entwine our arms holding wine glasses, sipping ridiculously expensive rosés Hoshi had stolen from Faerie Castle.

Occasionally, we would go to social events, but even among a slew of people our attention always gravitated back towards each other. People would end up shooting us spiteful glares as we retreated into our own little world in the corner, chatting about the sad people, the ordinary people we saw in the room. Their petty opinions didn't matter—we were engrossed in each other. We showed this in the way we dressed—no matter what style the party was, we came outfitted as we pleased, always complementing one another. To a black tie affair, we would wear a zoot suit and poodle skirt with saddle shoes on each—when we were thrown out, we'd laugh while exiting with a purse full of silverware.

After our exploits, we'd run home to my house and turn the hot water on in the tub. I'd sit on the toilet calmly while she was allowed to do anything she wanted to on my body—when the tub was half-filled, the roles were reversed. Once the bathtub was nearly overflowing, we'd lower ourselves in and spray each other childishly with water, laughing and submerging each other's heads. Sometimes there were bubble baths, and she'd temporarily mask her body with a cloud of bubbles—it was my task to blow them off to re-access what I would announce loudly was 'rightfully mine.'

Our favorite activity, though, was to climb onto the top of my roof and lay down a blanket on the deteriorating shingles. We'd stretch out our backs, my head cushioned in Hoshi's stomach, and stare at the evening sky. Often, we'd bring along a bottle of wine. The heavens, too, had stretched out a blanket for our curiosity, and sewed together a quilt made of the blackest silk, punctured with holes. We'd point out makeshift constellations—the drunker we became, the more lewd the star's sketches were. Mostly, though, we wondered which dots of light were planets, and whether or not we were alone. But then I'd look over at the beauty lying next to me, and realized that I never was.

As it happened, the morning of the Feepit experiment, Hoshi had disappeared; I woke up next to an empty space with crumpled sheets. I looked around the house for her, calling her name, but when it was clear she wasn't home, I reluctantly brewed a pot of coffee and drank it by myself, reading _The Communist Manifesto_ to bide the time. (Light, ridiculous reading was all I could stomach in the morning.)

Anxiety neglected me the ability to get down much coffee without upsetting my stomach. The experiment we had been toiling over for nearly a year was coming to head this day with the first day of testing. While I sincerely wished for a smooth trial run, which would show the faerie public that science was just as reliable—done well—as any archaic spell, I tried to repeat to myself that trial and error are a part of science that is unavoidable, and a lousy hypothesis could be just as valuable as a correct one. Still, a fragment deep inside of me loathed being wrong, and selfishly hoped to be proven brilliant.

When I got to work, I immediately pulled on my lab coat inside of idling in the hallways or staff room for muffins with my colleagues, as I usually did when I went in early. The participants in the experiment had been instructed to meet in Room B07, directly opposite the lab, bright and early. Rearranging the materials in my clipboard, I slipped in through the wooden doorway and took a seat on one of the blue, plastic chairs next to a faerie I was particularly chummy with.

"Lucindia," I whispered in a sing-song voice, putting my arm over my shoulder. We both knew this was an exhilarating and nerve-wracking day, as each of us had swapped personalities. Lucindia, a normally peppy, plump, and optimistic faerie, was wringing her hands nervously, her wrists bone-thin as she had contracted an anxiety-induced anorexia in the past few days. I, however, had become social and laid-back hours before, a bit of a gut protruding from my pants in an indication of stress-eating. "How are we doing today?"

"Nervous as fuck."

"I think you just described all of us here today," I laughed, patting her on the shoulder.

"Frank, my skin is flaking."

"And I'm going to puke up a breakfast of coffee and coffee if I don't keep pretending to be light-hearted."

"Coffee and cigarettes have been my three-meals-a-_day_ for the last week. I'm a fucking wreck. Look at this." She held up her pale hand, which quivering independently of her will in mid-air. "I can't hold a test tube with this!"

"Don't worry about it, you just record the data, I'll do the hands-on stuff."

"I'm not gonna trust a faerie like _you_ to record my data." Prejudice against my looks always flared up around stressful days. I learned to forgive this among those I have a shit about.

"Ahh, lighten up, Luci. Everything'll turn out fine."

That was when the director of our project walked out in front of us, clearing his throat officially. We fell silent immediately, as if someone it was a solemn occasion. The director was an older faerie, nearing her ten thousands, and had been around for some of the greatest faerie achievements in science. It was rumored that she was the disowned sister to the Faerie Queen (a great historical scandal brewing before I was born), but nobody could confirm the gossip. Yet I wouldn't be surprised if she did turn out to be royalty—she walked with such ingrained confidence, and despite her age there was a glowing beauty about her with a radius of a meter. She also had an uncanny ability to lead, and direct inexperienced college graduates with kindness and understanding.

"Now, everyone," she spoke, her voice a smoky, serious alto with a bit of a rasp from years of smoking. "This is the moment of truth: our day—or rather our week—of reckoning. I know everyone has grabbed a sheet from the chair upon entering," she began, nodding towards the doorway, "so everyone knows what their task is today, if they didn't already. I trust that everyone did the work that was required of them beforehand, so we don't have any slip-ups. Yes?" She inspected the room, as if to find a guilty face. Her eyes lingered on me momentarily—though we were on good terms, she still had an inherent suspicion towards me—and then turned back to the rest of the group.

She debriefed our mission once again, as if we hadn't heard it or even written it ourselves. Still, the detailed explanation helped us all to focus our minds on what needed to be done, and how each person's role was integral to the completion of the experiment. At the end of that, there was a brief session for questions, wherein faeries with smaller parts asked for a clarification of their task and those with bigger roles nitpicked through their job. The director answered them with grace and eloquence, inciting laughter occasionally with her light sense of humor.

Once no questions remained, she clapped our hands and directed us to get to our tasks, the group coalescing into areas of specialties. My area dealt with the mixing of the chemical to be given to the Feepits, an incredibly important job in precision and handling hazardous materials. We all grabbed our gloves, goggles, and other skin protection on the way to the lab, pulling it on as we walked down the hallway echoing with nervous conversation.

Theoretically, it was easy, but the majority of us were new to this scene of relatively large-scale experiments, so our hands betrayed us with full-body, amateur quivers. Still, we managed to set up the chemicals for the next step, and then it was back to the waiting room for us to hear reports from interns and drink coffee to give us even more severe cases of the jitters.

All things seemed to be going positively, even with the chemical injected into the Feepit's veins. Reports came that the Feepits were functioning normally hours after a dosage, and were eating and interacting normally. The malnourished group seemed to be sedated, though, and most of them were asleep. When this report came in, I wondered briefly about the status of the Feepit Hoshi had played with that one day, its eyes so wide and innocent through the smoke.

But as soon as our muscles began to relax and our mouths wrapped comfortably around our lunches, the footsteps of a hurried gait echoed through the hallways. We all looked up from our containers of soups, salads, and the occasional cigarette, and one of the interns burst in, breathing heavily. There was worry plastered on his face, and he gripped the side of the doorway to support him, the other hand holding a clipboard. He checked over the briefly, as if to confirm the fear on his face, and then spoke to us in a harsh voice.

"Doctor Quilla"—the director—"wants to see all chemical mixers in the lab observation room immediately."

We were off our seats in seconds, like a crew of fireman called to a burning building. Slinging back on our lab coats, we followed hastily after the intern—not running, but walking briskly enough to heighten the pulse. In minutes, we were in front of the observation screen. Only the head of the chemical team and myself (who was a co-director of that group) were allowed inside the room—the rest were allowed to lurk outside the enormous window, which functioned as a mirror on the other side.

I immediately spotted the problem. The group administering the drugs to the Feepits were watching in dismay towards where the handlers were, each Feepit in a clear box and specifically labeled to what group they fit in.

The group that had been left malnourished, a skinny group with patchy fur to begin with, were convulsing in their cages, seeming to be effected by seizures. Yet simultaneously, their appearance was beginning to distort: their fur flaked away and became spotty blue nests around them; their pale skin began to turn brown and curdled, as if it were old milk; their teeth grew out of their mouths like fangs and their eyes sunk in. Claws formulated from the tips of their soft, furry paws, and it all happened in minutes. Once the transformation had completed, the Feepits dropped like flies—their vital status monitors indicated no life, and when the handlers opened the cages and confirmed their deaths.

The overseeing advisor turned to me, her eyes wide with horror. Dr. Quilla had not arrived yet, by the looks of it, and as an advisor was a higher rank than me, I answered to her. She did not lay the blame on my co-leader, but rather seemed to place the whole of the burden on my shoulders with one accusing glance. "What is this?" she demanded, gesturing towards the Feepits. In a moment, she seemed to realize the unprofessional nature of her comment, and cleared her throat. She rephrased her accusation. "Dr. Frank, can you show me a list of the chemicals added and a sampling of the chemical the way you injected it?"

I nodded dumbly that I would, and turned around to get it only to discover my partner had vanished, off to get the sample. I was about to go after him, half to aid him and half to get out of the glare of the advisor, but the advisor grabbed me by the forearm and stuck me in place. "No. I want you to help the handlers over there." She pulled out a key from her pocket and opened the gate that separate the observation deck from the area of the laboratory. I rushed in and over to the handlers, who were beginning to place the mutated bodies of Feepits into bags for further research.

Already the healthy-to-normal weight class of Feepits were beginning to have the same adverse reaction, though with more excruciating time between the start and the finish of their unseemly demise. If the trend would continue, the chubby Feepits would be the ones to experience the longest of deaths, lasting God knows how long. Even now the screams of the average Feepits ricocheted across the room in an agonizing chorus. I could barely stand their tinny wailings in my ears, their cries once like filling one's lobes with cotton candy.

My eyes immediately darted to the second cage to the last. There sat the Feepit I had removed at Hoshi's whim—same number, same yellow eyes. I rushed to its cage, the other handlers too distracted with the number of bodies to properly label. Its cage was locked flimsily, and I managed to pry it open. The yellow-eyed Feepit lifted its head as I reached in, giving an approving cooing noise. I pulled it out by the scruff and tucked it under my arm, holding it like a football. I walked towards the advisor calmly, devising a lie on my feet.

"Since this group is as of yet unaffected, I'd like to sample its blood. If my hypothesis is correct, their transformation will be slower, and perhaps we'll see the different stages of this … abomination."

The advisor looked over me, as if polygraphing my behavior. Finally, she nodded and stood aside. "Go quickly."

I exited, first turning as if I was going to the part of the lab where liquid samples were taken. Checking behind me to see I was alone, I veered down another pathway into darkness. A sliver of light came from a bathroom (not gender-separated, as the population of men was too small to constitute a separate latrine), and I plunged inside, taking shelter behind a stall door.

I didn't unzip my fly—I had no intention to urinate. I sat down, pants still on my butt, and pulled the Feepit out onto my lap. It looked up at me innocently, and gave a sleepy yawn, giving a slight 'feep' in greeting. I began to smile at the sweetness of the gesture, when the 'feep''s began to gargle, as if I were choking it. Before me, the signs of change began to appear on the Feepit, a look of wild terror in its eyes. When I stroked it with my hand cautiously, a clump of fur fell at my feet, revealing pulsating skin beneath.

I stared at the Feepit for a while, an internal struggle pulling inside of me. There was a slim chance that the Feepit could still live—perhaps the process would abort midway, and it would remain altered, but still able to live a decently normal existence. Then, there was the worst scenario, the most likely scenario: that it would suffer the death similar to its fellow experimentees, and die a death slow and gradual, fading in my arms.

I was a man of statistics back then, and still am—numbers rule over my hope, and I like to say that I am pragmatic. But for a moment, in that cold bathroom where the heat was turned off; among the improvised, obscure graffiti wallpaper; on a toilet that gurgled and spurt from a bad plumbing job; on tiles that stared up at me sympathetically, I felt for all the world like sparing the little tyke. Its yellow eyes looked up at me with a heart-crushing sadness, a redness beginning to conquer the outer rims of those pure and trusting eyes. For a moment, I felt like saving its life, to grasp for the hopes of the future where nothing lay unwritten. For a moment, I petted its head gently, and wished it away from the curse now written in its bloodstream. For a moment, I felt merciless.

A moment later, I felt sparing.

I turned around suddenly, my labcoat hitting the stall door with a dull thwack. The Feepit gave a confused 'feep,' a tone of restrained agony in its voice. It had been trying to be quiet and peaceful in my lap, the dumb beast, neglecting itself the pleasure of screaming out its last breaths of life.

But I muffled that tender little voice—muffled it under the lowest water society had, the water used to piss and shit in. With my hand firmly on the back of its head, I shoved the poor bastard's face under the water and waited, trying desperately to ignore its pitiful struggles underneath. Its hind feet, becoming hideously clawed with that cursed chemical, shredded the material in my labcoat as it tried to surface, drawing blood from my wrist. I broke its legs with two quick snaps rather than suffer the injuries of its resistance to merciful execution.

Bubbles emerged from under my hand where it screamed for release—it knew not the more horrid fate that lay in front of it, its loosened fur beginning to float on top of the water. I imagined that soft, nearly toothless mouth opening underwater, its yellowy-reddish eyes opened wide to search for escape. I imagined that naïve voice, vocal chords filling with water to stifle the sound. I imagined slow, painful death of the other Feepits, writhing with no shame and dying hideous, placed in plastic bags like leftovers. I closed my eyes and held my breath, keeping my hand firm with conviction.

Finally, the body became still underneath me. A few intermittent bubbles loomed to the top of the bowl, and I held the Feepit under a few minutes longer to confirm its transfer to death. I pulled its face, fur now matted with water, up from the water—only hints of transformation lingered in its countenance, from bald spots of fur to growing incisors. Its yellow eyes remained open and soaking, gazing into life past the grave.

I closed those terrible, distinctive eyes and grabbed at the Feepit's scruff. I flushed the toilet to rid it of any excess fur, and exited the stall. Turning the air blower on with a wave of my hand, I placed the Feepit underneath, drying its fur to the tune of dripping water. The tiles seemed to close in around me as much as I tried to ignore them, and soon I was in an igloo of accusations from the wall. They screamed at me about ethics—about experimental procedure. They demanded I turn in the body, to be further examined—further exploited—for 'research.' The furry body beneath me began to laugh—laugh without its own knowing, laughing at my sudden wave of pity and my over-emotional science. My credentials seemed to fall in a heap of broken glass before me, and I nearly dropped the Feepit along with it.

I shouldn't have killed the Feepit—the toxin—not chemical—needed to make its way through the Feepit's system, to determine whether Feepits of all different ancestry were effected, and if any had a resistance. But the past was unalterable, and stared me in the face defiantly. Its stony countenance urged me to turn in the body, the fleshy corpse of a being once so full of life. The walls complied with their shrieking, pointing fingers of plumbing at me that burst through the walls.

I closed my eyes and stayed still momentarily to rid them from my conscience, then exited the bathroom, a dry and dead Feepit in my hands. My direction was at first aimed back towards the lab room, but I paused, and thought momentarily. I pulled the Feepit to my face as if for advice for the proper post-life procedure, its body still warm and freshly extinguished. I pulled it away, and considered.

I started looking for a shovel.


	6. Trash

I lost my position at the institute. They were kind about it: my director herself gave me a jingle the day after and calmly explained the situation. She deliberated nervously on how she thought I was a top-notch scientist until I was so sick with dread I nearly vomited. When she finally summoned the courage to say that I was relieved of my duty, I bade her adiou as collectedly as a man who's just had his soul crushed could, and then rushed to the toilet to puke.

I can't say I lost my job, because my station at the lab was purely on a volunteer basis of qualified applicants. There was no pay involved, and I had scrupulously saved my money from Fuck You, Ms. Man to pay for the essentials: rent and cigarettes.

Yet I would've been happier if I had lost my job at the record store—at least there I only wasted my time between ridiculing and occasionally selling an LP. The institute had been my sanctuary—granted, not everybody liked me (which was half of the reason why I was given the boot), but there I found friends among my research. Everything clicked there, both with my morale and my mind; I found joy in mixing different combinations, where I got blasted or not—but this was a rare occurrence, as often the correct combination of chemicals came naturally to me on paper beforehand or even directly in the lab. I had reveled in all the new things to discover—had reveled in the misfit nature of science in Faerieland, so like my existence—had reveled in all that I learned with hands-on experience. Now, it had slipped through my hands, and my primary source of joy was obliterated—a cloud of deep depression loomed over me, and I laid in bed, neglecting to go to work or band practices.

Life seemed pointless without the access to the activity I loved, and I began calling around and asking for a dimebag of skag in code, but none of my friends would deliver. Hoshi checked in on me periodically when she wasn't at work, sitting on the side of the bed quietly and stroking my forehead. I was kind to her every time except when she asked about how I got kicked out. At those times, I burst into a flurry of swears about the god-damn Feepit that she took out, and sent her reeling out of the room, and probably out of the house. For these reasons and others (namely, that I refused to shower), she kept her distance from me, sleeping on the living room couch.

She began to drift, it seemed. I knew it was partially my fault, as I refused to rise from bed, or let her in beside me. She still brought me my meals (or else I went without them) and sat on the side of the bed to watch me until I fell asleep, but there seemed to be a woodenness to her actions. Perhaps she had fallen into a rut that was over-comfortable to her, or maybe her job was placing too much stress on her. My greatest fear was that she had found another, and only still visited my room to make her free room and board legitimate. Whatever the reason, though, our relationship a dismal shade of what it used to be, sucking more life out of us than in.

Meep was my only real company in those days, going without food days on end to stay under my armpit loyally. Whenever I looked in those saucer eyes, a sea of calm washed over me—but it only lasted so long, and then I was back in the desert, wandering alone and scored by the sands of reality.

The real world called approximately two weeks later. I dared to turn on the television, an appliance that had been a glaring specter at the end of my bed. The screen crackled to life, as if static had overcome it in the months it lay unused. (I was not a huge fan of television—all of my information came from news papers and science magazines, though I hadn't been sifting through those lately either.) Meep lifted his ears at my side, having been sleeping for hours. The news began to appearing on the screen, with faeries in business suits and stern faces reporting murders and other curiosities.

But today's story wasn't about an anonymous murder with a line-up of suspects. It was a three-day-old story, about the death of the Faerie Queen. I sat up in bed, suddenly intrigued. While I was a little bit concerned that Hoshi hadn't indulged me with this critical bit of information, my mind was mostly concerned with another bit of information:

If the Faerie Queen was three days dead, there was only two days left until Princess Fyora's coronation. It was mandated that only five days could pass between a ruler's death and the crowning of her successor, and I knew in those five days there was a great deal of merrymaking. Granted, it meant a lot of work for the Faerie Queen's court, what with the funeral occurring on the third day and another huge ceremony in two more days regarding the former princess. In general, though, this was the days that there was the most proliferating of drugs, making them more accessible as the police didn't crack down as hard—except at the coronation parade, of course.

After watching my fill of television, I turned it off. I thought for a minute, staring into Meep's eyes for motivation. He nibbled on my finger with his buckteeth, and I smiled a little. I petted him on the head. "I think you might want some food, little buddy," I whispered, and pulled back my sheets and threw my feet over the bed in one motion, forcing myself to stand up. It was difficult at first—my feet weren't used to all the blood rushing to them, and they nearly sent me crashing into the door. Eventually, my equilibrium returned, and I took a few baby steps towards the door, Meep encouraging me at my heels.

Once I had some coffee in me and had burned through a whole pack of cigarettes (I was down to one-a-day while bedridden), I pulled on some slippers and dared to walk outside. The sun was shining brightly as it always did in Faerieland--we had only a dull concept of bad weather, and with the 99 chance of sunshine daily, meteorologists were unnecessary. Although the sun made my sink tingle slightly with a far away sensation of burning, it was good to taste the fresh air of outside, rather than the stale air I had suffered with in my bedroom.

I saw Hoshi approaching in the distance, and didn't acknowledge her immediately. I turned to the Moltenore, parked outside and undisturbed from the way I left it. I went back inside to retrieve the key, and turned it on—the gas needle, as I suspected, lingered towards empty, and I cursed at it under my breath. Hoshi was at my side by then, acting as if it wasn't a miracle that I had risen from my bed, staring over my shoulder.

"Whatcha doing?" she asked, rocking back and forth between her toes and the ball of her foot.

"Well, I _was_ checking my gas tank … now I gotta fill this fucker up." Sighing, I turned off the Moltenore and screwed open the gas tank. I motioned towards a hose coiled in the wall with a screw-on pipe beneath. "Turn that on and bring that over here."

Hoshi followed my orders, untangling the hose and then turning it on. With the water dribbling from the unclosed end, she brought it over, leaving a trail behind her which quickly turned to cloud. I instructed her to hold the water so that it was not pouring into the gas tank but perpendicular to it. I pursed my lips, watching the gas tank through the water and taking aim.

"Alright. Keep it steady like that. Here we go."

I held my fingertips inches from the water and focused. I centered my attention on the warmth inside of me—the warmth that indicated life, a soul, and an unrestricted will. Then, I focused on channeling that warmth down my arm, leaving the rest of my body cold but allow a stream of light to trickle through my fingers, refracting through the water to form rainbows that poured into the gas tank. Hoshi watched in amazement, her jaw slack in shock.

Once I could see rainbows while standing where I was, I led the warmth redistribute to my body, feeling colder than before. Quickly, I scooped up clouds from the ground and jammed them into the gas tank, quickly screwing it behind the fuel so it couldn't escape.

I straightened up and wiped my hands with a faux-sense of accomplishment, as I actually felt exhausted inside. Hoshi stared at me as if I were developing a second head.

"Frank … you know magic?" Her voice was quiet, as if it were a secret.

"Of course I know magic. I'm a fucking faerie, aren't I?"

"Yeah, but … you're always so adamant _against_ magic."

"Doesn't mean I can't do it." I focused for a moment, and poured the glow into my brain, making it seem as if my head were alight. Hoshi stifled a chuckle beneath her hand.

"If I wasn't a faerie, I might think you were a savior."

I snorted, releasing the flow of warm, and hopped onto the Moltenore, starting it up. I had no intention to go anywhere, but flying sounded like something that would properly acclimatize me to being outside again. Something stopped me, though, and I turned back to Hoshi. "Do you know what's going on with Fyora's coronation?"

"_Princess_ Fyora," corrected Hoshi, but didn't bother to wait for me to repeat it. "Well, it's happening in two days. I'm scheduled to be one of the carriers of the princess' carriage."

"Sounds exhilarating," I replied, masking my sarcasm. "Is Fyora as hot as she is in the tabloids as she is in person?"

Hoshi stared at me as if one of my eyes had fallen loose and was dangling from its socket. I calmly stared back at her, a light smile on my lips. I waited for a response until she managed to stutter out something, clearing her throat excessively. "Well, yeah … I mean, I've only caught glimpses of her, as we've got to bow with our heads down when she's around, but … I always catch snippets of the bits of her hair, and even just the ends of it is gorgeous … and once I saw her eyes, looking sideways, but they still seemed to bore into me, like she was focusing on only me …"

"You think she'll be a good queen?"

"Oh, absolutely. She has the strongest sense of justice I've ever known."

I paused, chewing on this. I reached into my back pocket for my cigarettes and a lighter, placing one in my mouth. Once I had it lit, I blew out a portion of smoke in Hoshi's direction, beginning to speak with the cigarette still bobbing up and down. "You know what I think, Hoshi?"

"What's up?"

"I think our monarchy's bullshit."

Hoshi looked at me with wide-eyes. I knew then that she was slowly becoming a warrior slave to the Faerie Monarchy. Before, folks like her—crack-addled, pseudo-bohemian folks who danced like banshees at wedding receptions—were always holding up the front of democracy, desperate to overthrow the monarchy. I had read their doctrine, and though some parts were half-baked (I wasn't a huge fan of 'equality of all people'), I supported their system called capitalism and the idea of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Occasionally, I attended underground meetings for the movement, where they shouted out support for a violent revolution. While I wasn't this extremist politically, when I envisioned the revolt a cold chill ran through my body—not one for fear of death, but rather a shot of adrenaline, making the hairs rise on my arms. It was not in terror but excitement, in seeing the blood mingle with the water in the gutters; in seeing the heads rolling into coconut heaps; in seeing the newly orphaned children in the street, dirty and crying for their mother, until their heads exploded like ripe oranges.

As soon as I got these strange urges, I identified it as that same voice that urged me to steal—urged me to, in some ways, sink that yellow-eyed Feepit to its doom. Soon as I heard it, I smashed it into the deepest well of my mind, where its sinister calls echoed chilling things to the surface.

"How can you say the monarchy is bullshit? Faerieland has been _stable and safe_ under Princess Fyora's line's rule! Not only do they have impeccable judgment, but princesses are trained and taught by the—"

"Spare me your nationalist diatribe, Hoshi," I said, rolling my eyes. "Just because someone pops out of someone else who happens to have veins that everyone assumes run with gold doesn't mean they're the supreme leader. Have you ever heard of the concept of 'free elections?'" Hoshi looked at me with that same doubtful, quizzical look. I sighed, and rubbed my hand over my face. "Never fucking _mind_. You royal schmucks are hopeless."

I was about to take off on the Moltenore without further comment, but in the blink of an eye Hoshi was in front of me, holding her arms out to block my exit. Her face was almost as red as her eyes; whether it was bloody with rage or flushed with an embarrassed was still undetermined. I put on my brake again and leaned back on the Moltenore with crossed arms, a mild look on my face. I flicked my cigarette with my mouth in her direction.

"Look _here_, Frank Sloth," growled Hoshi, a certain spite in her that I had never seen before. The fact that she neglected adding doctor as my prefix only underlined her anger. "Just because you have some fucked-up radical idea of a utopian society, doesn't mean it's fucking _practical_. The Faerie Family has been ruling over Faerieland since the beginning of time, and so far, Faerieland hasn't fallen into an enormous depression or had any major wars. We are a _peaceful society_ in the clouds, and are at the _peak_ of civilization. And some stupid revolutionaries want to tear down our society, for _what_? For their petty little ideas, for something that's unproven! _Fuck_ no!"

I turned off the Moltenore with a jerk of my key. Rage had been boiling up inside of me during her speech, but now it had come to a comfortable simmer, and there was no need to express anger on my exterior. I swung my leg over the Moltenore and approached Hoshi, who tried to gain an advantage in height over me by hovering in the air. Smirking, I grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her to earth, nearly smacking her into the ground. She groaned, trying to sit up, my hand still practically strangling her wrist. The voice in my head was about to speak, and it wasn't about to let her run away.

"No, _you_ look here, you nitwit," I said quietly, a silent threat in my voice. "Have you _seen_ the paupers in the street, rattling their cups for change? A change that will never come—physically or governmentally—unless we do something. Do you see the working class? You might've seen them at some of your shows, but you don't _see_ them. As soon as you're out of that venue, they disappear. They're smoke—the smoke that fuels your economy. And when they die, there's no funeral procession—there's no flowers laced into their hair. They live in the gutters, and they die in the gutters. They were born equal, but throughout life they were forced to tread a path downwards where they could boost others up. When a crime is committed, it's put on their shoulders automatically, without thought for higher influences. And do you blame them for their crime? For trying to steal some money for food? For getting into drugs because it's the only thing that relieves the pain of their proletariat suffering? We're not asking to bring you down—we're asking for a _chance_. A chance for elevation. A chance among all faeries, born equal and able to die equal."

Throughout this speech, I had been pushing Hoshi downwards by way of her fist, aggressively gripping it so I felt the bones shift beneath my hand. She was looking up at me not as if I was righteous, but as if I was something to fear—a dictator that forced her to her knees. That voice—that god damned uncontrollable voice—was reveling in it, soaking and breathing in the absolute power I seized over her. Inside, I screamed and squirmed against it, until I finally regained control, dropping Hoshi's fist like it was on fire.

I opened my mouth to apologize, but Hoshi was already gone. She fled so quickly I had first thought she had mastered teleporting—a rare and difficult skill—but then I barely caught a glimpse of her wings retreating in the distance.

I collapsed after that—fell down like my skin had been filled with heavy things and was weighing me to the ground. I smelled the sweet scent of gas dripping from the Moltenore, but instead of trying to find the source of the leak, I lay paralyzed on the ground. The realization of what I had just done came rushing forward like a pack of dogs suddenly let loose, ripping mercilessly at my well-being. My morale had seemed to peak when I went outside and then quickly slip as soon as I spotted Hoshi.

Ah, Hoshi—the thought of her agonized me with two dual perspectives. On one hand, I was pissed at her ignorance and absolute submission to the system just for the sake of a job. On the other hand, I still loved her, though I had not admitted that openly to her since that first night we fucked. (She had never reciprocated, much to my dismay.) These two mixed together to make red-hot claws run down my back every time I saw her working for the Faerie Family—which would become frequently, as she was to join the police force for the royal family. Perhaps it was merely childish feelings of jealousy—which was likely why I asked about whether Fyora was attractive or not—but it burned so hot and undeniably in my heart that I couldn't help but vocalize it.

Hoshi didn't return home that night, and I refused to return to my bed. Instead I slept on the couch, watching the red, digital numbers of the clock haunt me from the mantle. Sleep was limited for me, as my mind kept drifting to Hoshi and where she could be (probably establishing room in board at the castle, one possibility I lingered on with distaste), but the few periods of rest I received came from the sleepy eyes of Meep, watching guard on my chest.

The next morning came slowly, as I didn't awaken officially until one o' clock. But even that was instigated by the outside world—a harsh knock came on my door, and when it refused to cease, I was obliged to rise from the couch and stumble to the door to open it.

"Invitation for Dr. Frank Sloth."

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and had them adjust to the bleary afternoon sun to see who stood at my door. The frame was obviously a faerie, but as I began to view their light purple-and-blue uniform of the Royal Faerie Delivery Service, I cocked an eyebrow. I had never been delivered a package by merely the People's Faerie Delivery Service, or even a letter—it seemed suspect that I should receive something now from the RFDS so close to Fyora's coronation.

"What is it?" I held out my hand for the deliver. Without batting an eyelash, the primly-dressed faerie dropped. It was printed on cardstock, and had, from what I could see, real gilding for the letters. I looked up at the mail faerie for explanation.

"The Honorary Princess Fyora, future queen of Faerieland and all below, requests your presence at the castle."

I looked dumbly at the mail faerie, searching her face for some kind of a joke. Perhaps this was Hoshi pulling my leg, trying to, in a round-about way, indicate that everything was forgiven between us. Still, I couldn't resist bursting into gut-wrenching laughter, tears budding at my eyes. The mail faerie stayed stony face.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Sloth, but I don't quite see what is so funny. This is an official invitation, from the future Faerie Queen _herself_."

"I know, I know," I wheezed, wiping tears from my eyes, "but it's just so _absurd_. If I had a nickel—just a fucking _nickel_—for every time the Faerie Council, her fucking _advisors_, called me an abomination when I had to go before them, or paid my taxes, I could _buy_ Faerie City."

"Well, let's thank higher powers you aren't paid," snorted the mail faerie, obviously having heard of my reputation. "Just be sure to follow the directions outlined explicitly in that card. If you don't, the consequences may be dire. Good afternoon, Dr. Sloth."

The mail faerie took off without further comment, her mail satchel thumping against her hip. Still chuckling, I closed the door and went to the kitchen table, opening the invitation gingerly.

I could hardly believe what I was reading. Inside, the card invited me to a private meeting with 'The Honorary Future Faerie Queen, Princess Fyora.' As soon as I had opened the envelope, an amulet had fallen out, and the card instructed me to wear the amulet around my neck to get inside the building. From there, I would be escorted by Royal Fire Faerie Warriors to the Princess' chambers where we would discuss developments in faerie science and their relevance to her coming term.

It made absolute no sense to me. If Fyora was seeking the premiere mind on faerie science, why hadn't she gone to my director? Perhaps her hesitance to turn directly to her indicated that, indeed, the director was a close relative of the royal family. Yet plenty of my colleagues ranked above me, and though an official statement had not been released about my estrangement from the institute, I would assume that I was pretty far down on the science social ladder. Still, I couldn't deny the reality and legitimacy of the letter (at least, until I tried to enter Faerie Castle), so I got dressed into semi-acceptable clothing (I didn't want to be fancy, as I wanted to display some amount of rebellion towards the status quo of meeting royalty) and mounted the Moltenore, taking off for Faerie City.

Once I landed and found a place to park the Moltenore, I remembered why I had always insisted on staying in the outskirts of Faerie City, or far away from it, period. The place's population density was ridiculous, and at any moment a clear sidewalk could transform into one bustling with faeries landing to get into a building's lower floors, or, on the off chance, walking. Above, faeries just barely missed slamming into each other as they flew by at high, careless speeds, and though wings, independently, gave a somewhat silent and soothing sound, a whole cluster of wings were like a flock of bumblebees partying in your ear. This is omitting the fact that with every step I took, a nasty look was shot down at me hatefully for my defect in appearance. There, I could even send nasty looks to myself in the mirror, as I saw many male faeries there (comparatively to where I lived) that I could negatively set myself against.

With self-esteem just barely below negative levels, I managed to drag myself to the Faerie Castle, which wasn't that long of a walk but constituted dodging many spiteful dark faerie spells and the occasional other element. (Only dark faeries, saving Jhudora, were outright spiteful about my difference.) Arriving at the gates, I was faced with an intimidating sight: Faerie Castle in all its phallic glory, shooting up into the heavens. The gate before me looked to be made of solid gold, and it was flanked on both sides by two aggressive-looking Fire Faeries, dressed in full warrior garb. When I approached, they threw their spears in a cross in front of me, giving me a particularly suspicious look.

"You may not pass unauthorized," one of them uttered, but they were so identical in appearance it seemed to come from either. Even though I felt like my bladder might betray my pseudo-confidence at any second, I pushed back my shoulders and held out the invitation.

"Well, I got _this_ in the mail today … it just _might_ count as authorization …"

One of the faeries took it roughly out of my hands, and as the two inspected it, I contemplated how much I hated butch faeries. Finally, they glanced at each other, and then one of them turned back to me. "We're going to have to check this with security." Thereafter proceeded a whole bunch of unnecessary measures, wherein I idled outside for ridiculously long periods of time until I was finally let _in_ to the gate. There I had to go through more security, more paperwork, and receive an ID badge with a candid picture of me looking baffled before I was let in the doors of the castle. My mind was spinning by the time I was actually being led down a marble chamber, and I could hardly be excited, nervous or aggravated that I was going to see Fyora. I thought of asking the intimidating fire faerie warrior that led me if that procedure was used to kill the spirit of any would-be assassin, but thought better of it glancing at the curved weapon at her side.

We finally came to a door, and the fire faerie had to do all sorts of intricate, elaborate magic spells at the lock until wooden-looking folds in the door began to illuminate. The mahogany seemed to quiver, and then an invisible hand pulled on just the knocker, which bore the face of a snarling dark faerie. The knocker gave a resounding pound on the door, and then we waited for an answer. In the mean time, I tried to make small talk.

"So," I said clearing my voice, "you a music fan?" The fire faerie didn't reply, and didn't even bother giving me the attention of her eyes. Foolishly, I continued speaking. "Don't want to talk about it? It's ok, I'm kind of snobby about that anyway, and I don't want to hurt your feelings. I can do that sometimes. I mean, I'm a clerk at a record store, and you guys probably listen to something like, ugh, techno, to, you know, get you—"

"Consider this, Dr. Sloth," growled the fire faerie, her voice dropping to a tenor. "I've been trained to break your neck in twenty different ways, eleven of which involve a slow, painful death. I could merely say that you _looked_ like a threat to Princess Fyora's well-being, and that would be justification enough to kill you. Would you like to talk about music _now_?"

"Actually, I'd like to pee myself."

We stopped talking after that. It took about ten minutes longer before an ancient fire faerie came to the door, weak but powerful in magic judging by her outfit. Her gray hair was pulled up in a bun that strained her cheeks slightly, reducing the amount of wrinkles she may have had. Her eyes were stricken orange as most fire faeries, and she was robed elaborately, complete with golden tassels and fine material. Unlike my accompanier, her face was much kinder, and split into a genuine smile upon seeing me.

"Ahh, Dr. Sloth. It's a pleasure to see you."

She took my hand, sending a wave of warmth up my body. I wasn't sure I had ever met her (unless she was on the Faerie Council, damning me to the darkest regions on each tax day), but I smiled dumbly back hopelessly reeling for her name. She seemed to understand my plight, and laughed gently.

"I am Pandora. No, you've never met me before. But _I've_ met_ you_."

I wanted to roll my eyes, especially if she started mentioning things about former lives and prophecy. But she said no more on the matter, shooing my companion away with a flick of her wrist, an obvious gesture of authority. With a sweep of her hand, she invited me inside.

The interior of the room was more jaw-dropping than the castle itself. Even though it was only a princess' chambers, I had no imagination enough to conjure a more majestic vision. The floor was tiled with silver and black, and luxurious furniture lay around the room, decked in deep purple linens. A staircase lay in the middle of the room with a bronze banister, leading up to a room obscured behind a velvet drape. Pictures with gnarled frames hung on the wall, displaying the stern images of former monarchs. They seemed to judge me through former ages with their never-blinking eyes, sending death sentences to the modern world.

Pandora gazed up the stairs, almost with a sense of nostalgia, and then turned back to me. She raised one hand up the stairs, gesturing subtly yet grandly. "Behind that drape waits Fyora. She has been expecting you." I looked at Pandora suspiciously. There seemed to be a distinct lack of guards in the area, and I wondered if I was walking into an extermination trap. Pandora laughed again, a laugh like champagne bubbling into my ears.

"Do not fear, Dr. Sloth. We do not desire to harm you. There may be no visible guards, but they are all around. Besides, I am more formidable than I appear." A mysterious smile danced across her lips. "So don't do anything foolish, hmmm?"

"Thanks for the advice," I said shakily, almost more anxious now than before. Swallowing, I mustered all the bravery I had hidden behind a mask of cowardice throughout life and stepped up the stairs, wishing I had brought some sliver of science to defend myself.

Once I had scaled the staircase, I gingerly peeked past the drape. The room was dark within, and I looked back at Pandora questioningly. She gave me an encouraging nod, and I entered the room cautiously. For my own safety, I emitted light from my hands to see my way around.


	7. Spunk

The light wasn't necessary. Lights suddenly came to life all around me, and my unaccustomed eyes were suddenly dazzled. Lights came from the ceiling in the form of a gigantic chandelier, as well as glass globes levitating around the outer walls. Dressers and closet doors filled the sides of the room, and to the side a statue of a male faerie dipping a female faerie were soaked in the water of a fountain. The floor was made of marble, and there were more steps in a circular fashion before a platform came to a canopy bed, decorated with gold, silver, and purple cloths. Amongst the bedding and velvet pillows lay a delicate form, dwarfed inside of the luxury. It was quiet and sultry form at first, with hips, lips, and elbows to die for, but suddenly its—her—mouth split into a grin.

"Frank!"

She bounded from the bed with a distinct lack of grace, making a bee-line for me. I couldn't reposition myself, and as consequence she crashed into me, knocking us both onto the floor. Her arms wrapped around me, seemingly determined to squeeze the life out of me. I tried to pry her off, but it was to no avail physically.

"Please get off me," I begged, wheezing, but she muffled my protests behind her mouth, pressing it against mine and opening it with her own, making our tongues merge forcefully.

That was about where I drew the line. Even if Hoshi was pissed at me, I wasn't going to cheat on her—or be forced into cheating on her. I threw the faerie off with a sudden burst of strength, making her tumble backwards. Quickly, I scuttled to my feet and lunged for the door, hoping to make it out in time.

The faerie was faster. She rolled out of my throw and landed on her feet, holding her hands out, giggling. She seemed to think it was a game. She yelled a series of magic spells after me and my body locked up on me, freezing in mid-step. Slowly, she drew me towards her with a bit of levitation. At first I thought she would settle me directly by her, but it became apparent that she meant to set me on the bed. I struggled as best I could, but no amount of physical flailing could match up to a magic body-lock. She settled me on her bed, and kept me rigid until she had firmly affixed my arms to the bedposts by enchanted bonds, then released me.

I immediately gasped for air—body locks involved the lungs too, and I had been deprived of oxygen for at least two minutes. While I hacked and wheezed, the faerie smiled sensually and began to climb towards me, starting at the foot of the bed. I lurched my head upwards fearfully, trying to see clearly the face of my captor. "Who are you and why are you doing this to me!"

"Oh, Franky, don't tell me you don't like it." By this time she was at my toes, and her fingers were tickling up my inner thigh. My body was betraying my will to leave, causing the general to salute the oncoming sexual predator. I held my breath, trying to will away an erection. She began to introduce herself as she unzipped my fly gently, so I'd at least have the courtesy of knowing who raped me. "I'm Fyora. Princess Fyora, I suppose, and all those other mumbo-jumbo titles, but Fyora to you, ok?"

"I-I-I don't even know you," I squeaked as she eased my pants down to my ankles, her nails trailing down my skin. My boxers did little to reveal the excessive swelling in my nether regions.

"Oh, but I know you," she purred, lifting up the bottom of my shirt. She began kissing it slowly and lustily, and shots of ecstasy were sent to my head. I tried to resist the pleasures of the body, desiring to get a clear picture of the situation.

"H-h-how?"

"Don't ask silly questions, Frank," she said, biting at my skin, chastising. However, she looked up my body and paused her poaching. "I know you through everyone. The Faerie Council, Hoshi, and everyone else who's seen your face."

"Then you know," I panted, swallowing to produce saliva, "that I'm a disgrace to your race?"

"Franky, of _course_ I know that. I've heard them call you a mutant, a misfit … a whole dictionary of words. But that doesn't matter, Franky. That makes it better." She tried to continue her task, but I kept clattering my teeth to get her attention as well as poking her with my toes, giving rise of an annoyed look in her eyes.

"What about through Hoshi?"

"I was always interested in you, Franky." I hated how she called me that name. As far as I was concerned, it was only ok if Jhudora or Hoshi called me that—Fyora made it sound mocking, and not endearing like the other two. "I remember seeing you on tax day, and how you were different from all those other meat heads. Even though the Faerie Council was so rude to you, and despite the fact they had power over your finances, you still gave them sass. That was hot."

She seemed to be dreaming now, looking upwards as she remembered, that faint smile of reveling in memories lost affixed on her face. She seemed disinterested in my body for a moment, which was a welcome change. "Then I put a wire on Hoshi when she started working for me as soon as I found out she lived with you. I heard every minute of your conversations—Hoshi was so boring, but you were so … witty and smart. So I needed to see you in private."

"But! But!" I interrupted her before she could go back to her sexual conquering. "Why are you … doing this to me so close to your coronation? When you barely even know me?"

"We have a policy as rulers. We're not allowed to marry a king—a king is unheard of in history, as you know. We're not even allowed to have lovers, though that rule can be … stretched." She smirked at this. "But … before I'm crowned, I'm allowed to take a lover a day … partially to make me feel better about Mom dying"—she showed no remorse over this comment—"and partially because I won't be gettin' any anymore."

"So I'm Day Four guy," I said distastefully. I doubted Fyora had a concept of STDs—she was a gorgeous girl, with her lavender eyes and hair, and skin as fair as post-autumn snow, but there was no inkling of intelligence behind her wide, earthy eyes. While Hoshi had argued in Fyora's favor for the very fact that she was informed and trained, I could only see magic training coming from her—not book smarts or common sense.

"Oh, Franky, it's not like that," she said, shaking her head. She brushed her hair against my stomach, causing the mountain beneath her head to renew itself in size. "If you must know, you're the first lover I've taken. I hate those meaty men … they're gross. They're all boring, and all the same, and all so … pushy. They're so rough. You're nice and submissive.

"Thanks," I replied sarcastically. She didn't pick up on my tone. Her path of kisses, still wet and cold, was trailing further south, and her fingers were beginning to pull back the elastic of my boxers. I swallowed, too nervous to kick her with my feet. "You _do_ know I'm with Hoshi, right?"

"Of course I know that," she said, looking up with slight insult. "But even if you were married, by law this wouldn't be illegal. This is my last day before they imprison me with a crown, Franky." Her eyes were quivering, as if beginning to cry. A portion of sympathy seemed to stretch from her to myself—or perhaps it was just the insistence of a battle charge from the general below. "Please don't make me sad, Franky. Please?"

I considered. I pictured Hoshi at the foot of the bed, staring up at Fyora and me, already practically underway. I pictured her face tangled in hurt, in a betrayal, and the tears that followed afterwards. Yet there was something wrong about that picture—I had never seen Hoshi in tears, I realized, and my imagination conjured up a vision that seemed false and unconvincing. Additionally, with Hoshi's current hyper-loyalty to the royal family, I could imagine her more clearly supporting this decision, as it was the will of her beloved Princess Fyora.

Perhaps it was truly my libido that made the decision, as others might argue later, but in the moment it seemed that logic was at work. I had used history and personalities to gauge my decision, to weigh out the factors of fidelity; ultimately the scale had fallen in Fyora's favor, and I wiped aside guilt with a sweep of my hand. Suddenly, I was compliant to Fyora's will, a piece of putty in her hand. After she had finished her bondage spiel, she even released my bonds, and we pulled back the sheets to slide in the silk of her bed cloths. Eventually, all clothes were tossed aside, and I luxuriated in the fine quality and softness of Fyora's alabaster skin, such a stark contrast to the normal tan roughness that I experienced with Hoshi. Her wide wings were also not quite as nimble as Hoshi's, so I had to be gentler with her; the delicacy I treated her with made it feel like she was made of pre-shaped porcelain, waiting to be shaped into something precious. So I turned and folded her, and she resisted with giggles and snorts into my skin, tickling me to the core.

She grew tired after a stretch, especially when the general started to dribble like a rabid dog instead of shoot. We lay next to each other, her head cuddled in my arm pit, the rest of her body curled as if it were a fetus. I put my arm around her in a protective gesture, though I felt no impulse to guard her from danger. She circled my nipple with her finger, seeming to contemplate telling me something. "Franky?"

"Just Frank's fine."

"Franky," she repeated, as if to overrule me. She paused from her nipple twirling and looked up at my cheek. "Did you know I was a virgin?"

If water had been in my mouth, there would've been a spittake. As there was none, I just gave a short, sudden cough. Of course, she had felt a little tighter than I was used to, but due to her delicate frame, I thought that she just had a narrower cunt than Hoshi. I swallowed back any further coughs and looked down at her and her innocent eyes, waiting for an answer. I rubbed the side of my nose. "Are you _serious_?"

"Yes," she said in a small voice, and nuzzled into the side of my body. I put my hand in her hair, stunned, trying to subconsciously comfort her. I remembered my first time only hazily, and from what I gathered it was terrible. It was a mixture of bad opening bands with a feature band that played poorly, hard liquor, serious mistakes, and a faerie that turned out to have a glass eye. "Are you mad at me now?"

"I, uh … well, I'm just, er, _surprised_, because you were so good at …" I cleared my throat and added under my breath: "… blow jobs …"

"Don't be silly, that's not sex. Of course I've given that before. But all the way?" She suddenly swiveled on top of me, putting her hands on either side of my face. She leaned down her lips to my ears, her hair trapping my face, and whispered. "Just with you, Franky. And you were amazing."

"Ah, it was … um, nice of you to wait." I looked sideways, enjoying the use of my hands while I still had them. The general would not salute at this point—he was far too tired, and wanted to rejuvenate for the rest of the day. My libido could never figure out women.

"It was _so_ worth it." Fyora worked on kissing me for a while, and I didn't wholly object. After our mouths and tongues grew tired of each other, Fyora rolled off from on top of me and onto her feet, still completely naked. I watched her carefully crafted back retreat from the bed, mesmerized by the movement of her shoulder blades behind her wings. For a moment, I almost wished I could remove those purple fans, as they obstructed what I found truly gorgeous.

"Let's run away."

The words came from left field, and hit me with a smack in the unsuspecting face. I sat up suddenly staring at her, the sheets shielding my bits and piece. She had turned back in her journey to her drawer suddenly, facing me with her arms akimbo. Her hair just barely reached down to cover her breasts, making her somewhat decent save for her bush. (Faeries weren't huge fans of shaving their beavers.)

"What … did you say?" I stuttered, hoping I was going deaf.

"You heard me." She took a step forward, a threat in her gait. "Let's run away. Tonight. I know teleportation skills—they can't trace us. I'll be able to conjure or find food easily … and our clothes, I can wash them with my magic. It knows no element." She seemed to be speaking out loud more than speaking to me, beginning to pace about the bed. I watched the machine in her head churn through the possibilities, and how feasible her impulsive plan was. She murmured some things under her breath, used her fingers to chart the statistics, and occasionally supplied me with the details, her eyes eager to share. "… and then we can go the mountains … how pretty would that be? Really, it won't be that hard …"

"You've got some severe cold feet there about coronation, kid," I snorted. The cause of her anxiousness wasn't hard to figure out—in less than twenty-four hours, she would be glued and molded into a role that she would have to act permanently without room for change. It was understandable that she wanted to bolt—to see a life that was filled with alternatives, a life that was selfish and crude. Yet I knew she couldn't survive out there; she had been sheltered all of her life, suckled at the teat of the finest of society. In the outside world, she would attract attention by her demands for lavishness and servitude, a thing the common faerie did without.

"Don't call me _kid_!" snapped Fyora, turning around to face me. Her pale face was flushed with indignation. "I'm probably _old_er than you!"

"No, you're not," I said quietly, shaking my head with a sort of pity. "I remember your birthday. It was all over the news. Granted, I was just a little kid myself … maybe twenty years ago … but I remember it." A solemnity went through the room as Fyora's perspective seemed to shift towards me. Before she looked at me with superiority yet desperation—in this sudden reverse of roles, she seemed to think of me as the elder, someone she needed to run and cry to. I saw it in her eyes, but she refused to show it in her body language or tone, overacting the pomposity she had before.

"All the better then. You can protect me when we go to the mountains. You can scare them with your face or something." My back grew rigid with this comment—I would have normally brushed it off from anyone else, but from someone I had just fucked and taken their virginity from, it seemed overly flippant. She didn't notice the added tension in the room, continuing to blather mindlessly. Her eyes began to wander towards her dresser drawer. "I should start packing my clothes. It'll be a lot, so we'll have to teleport in trips. I wonder if I can levitate _all_ of my bags. Probably. Oh! And my makeup … and hair styling … I wonder if there'll be an outlet somewhere …"

I had to let it stop. It was hilarious in some ways, but mostly it was downright pathetic with a side of irritating. Fyora had been handed the world to her on a silver platter, and now she was giving me an ultimate display of ungratefulness. To have all of the luster she was regularly surrounded with shoved in my face, and then have her and her naivete presume that a life could be better, even not enslaved by one's blood, was like spitting in my face.

"Fyora!" My shout seemed to grab her attention, as up until now I had been a relatively quiet partner. Her mouth clattered shut, and she pivoted towards me, seemingly stuck in place.

If my various violent encounters with Hoshi had taught me anything, it was that, when angered, the gift of being threatening came naturally to me. Even in the face of royalty, this skill came with little effort. I threw back the sheets as if I were striking them violently, standing up at the side of the bed. My spine seemed to unfold extra vertebrae to increase my height and force Fyora to cower under me. I walked towards her until I was within a distance to reach out and grab her—which I did, by the shoulders and firmly. My fingers sunk in deep enough to leave bruises, and she whimpered. Already her royal resolve was fading beneath the raw tyrant that lay latent within me, the voice that screamed to be released. I could melt her crowns and history down to a puddle of rust with a flash of my eyes and that dictatorial charisma so necessary for mass speeches.

"Listen to me. Very carefully now." My voice was fatally low, intoning among the gutters with an oncoming tide of sewage. "You are a naïve, childish faerie, who has not yet been weaned off the dependent teat of the monarchy. Your mother died just four days ago, and you go fuck around with a man you don't even know. Worse, you don't even show _remorse._ It's like she's just gone on vacation, and you have the house to yourself, so you do all the dirty things you can imagine. Granted, I've never had a mother—or a father—but if I did, I believe I would treat their memory with a bit more res_pect_."

My fingers had formed a vice grip around her, and every so often I would shake her like a maraca, soulless and full of beans. Her head bobbled like a balloon attached to a spring when I did, seemingly empty. This made it more difficult to maintain my rage, as that voice deep inside of me desired something with a soul to torture—inanimate objects held no interest to it, for they couldn't feel the pain. Still, a part of me wanted to teach her a lesson, and punish her for taking careless advantage of her cushioned life.

So I threw her. I tossed her like she was nothing, either by her light weight or a sudden surge of strength. Her body crashed like glass against the marble steps, making a strange swooshing and slapping sound. I tried not to hear the dull cracks of bone within her landing, but their low bass seemed to penetrate through the other noise. I winced and turned away, slowly came back to myself, my hands tingling.

After I didn't receive any angered response from the other side of the room, I dared to look in Fyora's direction. She was crumpled on the staircase, unconscious. I definitely hadn't killed her (which would have been impossible unless the floor was composed with knives), as a frail breath entered and left her body. Yet there was a new gash across her forehead, spitting blood onto the floor beside her. The dark liquid congealed into a puddle, and then began to drool down to the stair below Fyora's head.

While Fyora had a dozen other visible bruises, my attention was lost on them to the gathering of crimson, morbidly majestic. I began to approach her form just to get closer to that throbbing plasma, tiptoeing as if it were an illegal act. I sat down next to her on the stairs, and wiped at the cut with my hand, drawing back when a bit was on my fingers. I raised it to my nose and inhaled its metallic scent. I had experienced blood endlessly in my career as a scientist, but under these new circumstances it seemed so much more sumptuous and sexual. It had become an object of desire to touch and experience first hand, rather than an unfortunate but necessary evil to handle with gloved hands.

"Welcome … Dr. Sloth."

The voice was familiar—the voice of Pandora—but there was something darker about the way she said my name. It send chills down half of me, while the other half was unaffected, or even praised by the disapproval with which she addressed me. I turned around—there was light coming from the doorway from a flame seated in Pandora's hand, much brighter than the dimmed lights of Fyora's room. I shrunk back to the shadows, shielding my eyes from Pandora's face with the bloodied hand. Some of the blood fell onto my cheek like a scarlet tear drop from my eye.

I stood up suddenly. The whole of my self came back to me, and I pushed back my normally snide nature. I had checked myself, and realized what had transpired—something that was irreversible in the eyes of the Faerie Court, likely, whether Fyora decided to reverse it or not (I wagered she wouldn't). My only hope was to appeal to Pandora and explain my situation, and perhaps get her on my side. She seemed to be of significant influence in the royal family, especially if she was treated as Fyora's guard, and perhaps she could argue my case to the Faerie Council.

"No, Frank." Her voice came in both the physical world and within my head—it was that moment that I realized she could read my mind, and had probably overheard my contemplation to manipulate her to my side. Even now she read my brain, milling over the possibilities of whether she could do so or not. "Silence your head, Dr. Sloth. You are very noisy up there."

Before I knew what she was doing, she was in front of me and placing a warm hand on my head. It felt like crinkled paper towels with a bit of weight beneath, but it calmed the stirring thoughts inside my head that too often fermented to yield to the voice. My arms relaxed at my side, and I gave a boyish sigh of relief, a smile trying to find its way onto my lips.

"Do not smile quite yet, Dr. Sloth. There will be many opportunities for that later. For now, you must face your destiny."

The sarcasm welling in my chest quickly reappeared. "Could we stop it with the archaic speech? I mean, I know I'm supposed to love it, because I'm a faerie and all, but—"

"Shhh. Fyora is asleep." Pandora put her fingers at my lips—her hands were no longer like a comfort formula, but burning hot. I fell silent. Pandora lifted her hands off of me and looked over to Fyora. She bent down and brushed the hair out of Fyora's face, and with a delicate swipe of her finger, erased the gash on Fyora's forehead, barely leaving behind a scar. Pandora smiled gently down at the child, with all the affection of a mother. Perhaps Pandora had been Fyora's nanny, and now, with Fyora's mother dead, had fully replaced the maternal figure. "To sleep, perchance to dream," Pandora murmured, her voice barely audible. Her eyes were half-closed, as if in a trance.

"I should be going now," I said under my breath, and began to inch towards the door. Not only was I anxious to escape the castle walls that seemed to be filled with my crime—a crime that was barely that, yet still punishable by law—but Pandora and Fyora seemed to be having an intimate moment reserved for two, and I was the rusted third wheel fit to fall off.

"Stay for a moment." With just a raise of her hand, Pandora persuaded me to stay in place. It wasn't so much as being paralyzed as it was drained of my will to move; the enchantment of her ego was absolutely overwhelming, and in her presence she could bend you to her liking. I wondered if she did this too with Fyora, to control Faerieland remotely with a crowned puppet on her hand. Deep down, beside that little voice manifesting to a man, I desired that ability—an undeniable charisma that captured the attention of all.

She stood up and walked towards me, stopping mere inches from my face. I was a shade taller than her, so she had to turn her head upwards to look at me, but it made her no less imposing. She seemed to judge every scar, every birth mark, every twitch of my eye with a sweeping glance and laid them out on the table for me to see.

"It is … a _shame_, Dr. Sloth," she sighed heavily, and turned away from me. Still I was in her grips, desperate for her next word. "In the future, the looks you have now will not be so admonished. Though your beloved science … a science of faeries … will be dead."

"How do you know that?" I demanded, suddenly insulted. Even kicked out of the institute, I felt a need to uphold its honor and prove its worth. "They'll see in time! My director—"

"Your director—Quilla--was trained by me," Pandora said calmly, smoothing her dried, gray locks. They looked like long willow leaves from her head. "She went through a period of rebellion, wherein she separated from magical ways, but now … now she knows her science will fall under. For she was forced to relieve you."

"And what makes me so special, anyway! Science can continue without me. It's probably better that way. I just kept fucking up experiments. I was worthless there too!" Verbalizing what I had dragged myself down with in the private recesses of my mind day in and day out struck me harder than I thought. This time, I was knocked back not so much by Pandora's revelations but by my own, holding a hand to my chest in shock.

But Pandora was refuting me, shaking her head slowly. "No, Dr. Sloth. It was not your fault when you added the catalyst. It was not the catalyst. It was what someone added before testing day. To sabotage you."

"Who?" I demanded, not bothering with how she knew this knowledge. I was even more antsy now than before, but rather to stay—foolishly, I believed if I could get this snippet of information, I could reveal it to the director and regain my place at the institute.

"Do not bother with that right now, Dr. Sloth. Your reputation has no need to be repaired—it is obsolete here, now. Your destiny lies far from here, away in the stars."

"Why must all you mystics be so aggravatingly cryptic?"

"We find it funny when you mortals whine so," smirked Pandora, and then immediately returned to seriousness. Again she gave my face a thorough inspection, and then grilled me a question. "This Hoshi girl—"

My heart skipped a beat.

"—what do you fell towards her?"

"I love her." I said the words without missing a beat, without a shift in expression except the harsh blushing of my ears.

"And yet you sleep with Fyora?"

"My body isn't where I love from." Pandora looked away, confused. She put her finger against her lip, as if pondering in confusion, searching the archives of her mind. She looked back to Fyora, who remained unconscious but no longer bleeding. The blood still dripped beside her, making an eerie leaking sound.

"I did not foresee this …"

"Foresee what?"

"Your love for Hoshi."

"You know, if you know anything and everything, like you seem to, can you tell me what the hell Hoshi is and what she does working for Fyora?"

Pandora seemed to hesitate at this question, as if initially to reject my request. Then, she shook her head as if to chastise herself, than nodded very slowly. "I suppose it is ok. You will be leaving from this place soon enough, if I am not wrong again.

"Hoshi told you she was half light and half dark, and indeed this is true. But she does not come from faerie parents, though indeed she is a faerie. She came to the orphanage in an egg—came crashing from the sky like a meteorite. The egg was split down the center—one half glowing, the other nearly threatening to suck us in with its blackness. We stored it somewhere safe, yet checked upon it constantly, keeping it warm. Finally, one day, there was no egg left—just a child, a child with dark skin and freckled with stars. She had strange wings, and strange eyes, but her features were primarily faerie-like, so we took her in.

"She demanded to be called Hoshiya—nothing else would do. At a young age, she demanded to be released—and what could we do? She was already so independent … so we let her go. Perhaps for the worst." Pandora sighed heavily, undoubtedly thinking about the coke addiction that Hoshi had developed. "But now she has returned to us. She is quickly becoming one of our best warriors—far better than any fire or dark faerie we have ever trained. At the coronation reception, there will be a battle between the two final candidates for the official title of Battle Faerie for Fyora's term, as Jagon is stepping down. Hoshi will be one of them."

My memory wandered back to that one night on the Moltenore, Hoshi laughing and proclaiming her title to be the Space Faerie. She would be the Space Faerie and live on the moon, and I would circle the planet in a spaceship. We would both be lonely in our respective homes, and find no real place to hang our hat—but on those rare moments when the moon was swollen and our hearts in synch, we would meet on a cloud and reunite our bodies, too long separate halves.

"Will I be around to see her?" Already I took Pandora as an authority on the future.

"Yes, but only briefly. You will … no, I cannot tell you that." She shook her head solemnly, putting a finger across her lips as if sealing it. "Some things about destiny must be revealed for themselves."

"What if I don't believe in destiny? What if I believe in free will?" I insisted. I often contemplated over the matter, and the thought of everything being preordained was too much for me to stomach. I was a control freak, and to have the future of the world spin out of my commands seemed completely unreasonable. It was a concept I couldn't get my brain around by virtue of my bigotry.

"Continue in your illusions, then."

"But if there's no free will, how did you not predict me loving Hoshi?"

"There are mistakes at times."

"Then it's not perfect!"

"No, my prophetic powers are not perfect. That does not make fate flawed." I was grinding my teeth at this point. Her utter calm in the midst of my desperateness to prove that I was the master of my own destiny made me look only the more foolish in trying to prove my point. Still, I stayed stagnant on the point, not allowing myself to be convinced. I knew as soon as I stepped out of the room—as soon as my brain calmed down from the matter—a witty and bitingly logical retort would come to me. For now, I declared our stalemate, though she likely supposed she won.

"Fine, difference of opinion. Can I go now?"

She smiled mysteriously at me, probably trying to hide her smirk from her assumed victory. "Just a moment." Without warning, she reached up with those tissue paper palms and pressed them against my cheeks, pulling my forehead down so it touched hers. Again, a voice came in my head and into my ears, stimulating two parts of my mind at once. A chill ran down my body as she spoken, her voice filled with sadness and spite. "Dr. Sloth, you will be successful in what you pursue in the future—perhaps not immediately, but when it occurs, it will echo throughout the universe. But be wary—this love of yours of Hoshi conflicts with your inherent success in anything you accomplish relative to Faerieland. Still …"

She released me, making me rock backwards without support. I stumbled for a moment, and she stood patient, waiting to finish her sentence. She grabbed my hand to steady me, and kissed it lightly, chivalrously. "… take care of her, Frank."

She let me exit peacefully, eventually escorted by a flock of fire faeries. Evidently, the news hadn't gotten around about my outburst at Fyora, and I managed to escape the castle unscathed despite the obvious blood stains on my hands and cheek. From there, I gave one glance backwards before sprinting back to the Moltenore, practically jumping on the back of it to mount it. The key was jammed into the ignition before I even realized I was on the bike, and soon I was far above ground—further up than the faeries below me, who from above appeared like docile butterflies with no bad intentions.

How little we could know of the world from far away.

Meep was nowhere to be seen that night, and his absence from the house would continue on for a while. I checked his food bowl to find his half empty, implying he had skipped his dinner. I rattled the bowl slightly as if to intrigue him, but no pink, buck-toothed face peeked around the corner. I followed his lead and skipped dinner myself, retreating immediately to the bathroom to wash the sin off of me.

The bed seemed obscene that night. I hadn't washed my sheets in ages, and they stunk of Hoshi, and guilt. In a masochistic fashion, I buried my face into them and inhaled all of the scent I could stand. Finally, half suffocating, I pulled my face out of the pillow and breathed heavily, trying to catch my breath. The air was stale, but sufficient, and when I looked down at the pillow, I was surprised to see that there were two dark patches on my pillow. When I touched them, they were wet, and when I reached my fingers to my eyes, I realized they were in a similar state.

Even once I verified the fact that I was crying, I was by no means sobbing. The tears didn't transfer to the rest of my body and morph into shuddering weeping as they often had before. Instead, I just lay there with my eyes leaking, staring at the ceiling. The water from my eyes distorted the ceiling to look like a pool of molten plaster, shifting and bubbling before me. The chaotic lava lamp of gray and shadow lulled me to sleep while I cried without feeling.


	8. Excess

"Wake up."

A musical voice was my alarm clock instead of the calloused tongue of Meep. I opened an eye lazily—it was still dark outside, and my eyes took a moment to adjust from the darkness of dreams to that of reality. Slowly, a silhouette focused in front of me, though I had to grab my glasses clumsily from the bed stand to distinguish facial features. I blinked a few times, hardly believing my eyes. The two orbs I could barely make out as crimson flashing in the synthesized light of a dying moon and a stillborn sun said only one thing to me:

"Hoshi!"

I meant to stifle my excitement. Granted, I had gone a longer time without seeing a trace of Hoshi rather than the two days I had suffered through, but I had needed her more than ever in those few hours. I wanted to reach out and touch her, to pull her into bed with me for a still-drowsy romp, but from the feeling she was giving me, this wasn't the time. She was already dressed for society rather than the sexily scruffy oversized t-shirt and panties she often wore to bed, and I alertly sat up at this realization.

From what I could decipher in the darkness, she wore a high-ranking royal warrior garb, complete with purple sash, golden breast plate and chain metal. Mentally, I mused at how I had first seen her, such a drastic shift from her appearance now. She had traded slick, sweated, natural skin and swanky wear for skin that was powdered to appear lighter than it was, and a wardrobe that reeked of conformity.

"G'morning, Frank." She leaned forward and gave me a kiss. I tried to approach her lips with mine at this time—and for a second she exuded the aura of the Hoshi I knew, the sloppy, messy faerie with bedroom hair and ripped clothes. But then she was cold again, as cold as the metal that encased her body, and only gave me a kiss on the forehead. "I've got special orders from the Future Queen of Faerieland, the Hono—"

"Why do you all insist on saying her full title? Why not just Fyor—shit!" My griping transformed to something of dread. I still fully remembered my experience yesterday, and I was willing to bet that Fyora did too. An order to be removed from my household at the crack of dawn on the day of a Faerie Queen's coronation could only mean sinister things, especially after spiting her. I wracked my brain for anything I found particularly objectionable about coronations when I had studied them in elementary school. My brain kept slipping from the subject and focusing back on Hoshi, as if to protect me from the truth.

"What's so wrong with the Future Queen of—"

"Yeah, can it, Hoshi. In my house, it's Fyora. Maybe Spoiled Cunt That Will Be a Shitty Ruler, but only when I'm not thinking." Hoshi's nostrils flared, as if she herself had been insulted.

"How _dare_ you say that about our soon-to-be-a-sovereign—"

"I fucked Fyora, ok, Hoshi? And it was a shitty experience. So _shut up _and let me think!"

Hoshi's mouth closed with a surprised click. The comment had just the effect that I had desired on her. At first, I was afraid it wouldn't work—I assumed that any errant feelings Hoshi had towards me had faded, and been replaced with a love of her work. The steely, serious look faded from her eyes and the old, emotional Fyora came back, complete with lip pursing and teary eyes. Unfortunately for my life, this only further distracted me from remembering traditional coronation ceremonies.

"You _what_?"

"Nothing! Forget about it. It technically legally didn't happen now."

"You _fucked_ her?"

"Hoshi, look, this isn't about—"

"Don't tell me what this isn't-fucking-_about_!"

"Look, are you jealous or something? 'Cause you seem pretty interested in Fyora, with all that 'Grand Honorary Bigot' bullshit!"

"What the fuck are you talking about? Fyora's my fucking _employer_!"

"Hey, that just makes it kinkier for you, doesn't it!"

"Oh, _fuck_ you, Frank, you sniveling piece of shit. I'm gone for two days and you go sniffing around for another piece of ass!"

"Hey, hey, when you sniff around and your nose detects a royal cunt, you don't just turn it down! Especially when your girlfriend fucking _disappears_!"

"This isn't about _me_, Frank. This is about your fucking infidelity. Now get back on topic! You _fucked _her!"

"I didn't fucking _enjoy_ it!"

"Oh, like _hell_ you didn't!"

"What the fuck? She strapped me against her fucking _bed_! Who does shit like that besides actors?"

"Well, _you're_ the one bringing up kinky shit, I wouldn't be talking, Mr. Bondage-Dick!"

"What kind of an insult is that?"

"A fucking bad one, just like your face to the faerie race!"

"Oh, okay, it's about _me_ then. My personal appearance. Yeah, that has to do a _whole lot_ with how I fucked Fyora!"

"Stop _saying_ that!"

"I fucked Fyora!"

"Shut up, ugly ass!"

"I fucked Fyora and it was _so_ fucking good. She was so white, and bony, and tight, unlike a brown fatty whore I know. Hmmm, who could _that_ be?"

"Fuck you, Frank!"

"You know what, _fuck you_, Hoshi! You leave my pad for days and don't leave any fucking note, you don't tell me shit about your job, you get all cold in bed nowadays because, I don't know, maybe you're stroking off to Fyora at the castle … fuck, we hardly even _talk_ any more, Hoshi! Sometimes I think you're just using me for board and cigarettes!"

"Well, maybe I am, Frank." Her voice was low and dangerous, and a chill ran up my spine. It was a shiver of fear, a strange feeling, as well as of helplessness and loneliness. I had merely thrown the possibility out there, and now it surrounded me like a thousand ghosts, rearranging the mentality of the past. What if she _had_ been using me? What if I was only a tool to her, to launch to success? Suddenly, a dozen images of Hoshi popped up in my brain—images of Hoshi laughing, crying, across from me smoking, next to me in bed, screaming over me as she came to orgasm. Slowly, the soul was sucked from each of those moments, and I was left fucking, talking to, laughing with, and loving a hollow cocoon, brittle and breakable when I dared cherish it.

I lunged for the bathroom. I needed to get away from the fumes of animosity floating through the room, crowding me from the room's lack of ventilation. I also knew of some appliances in there plugged in to an electric socket, and had a tub that could be filled with water in a brief period of time. I knew the specter of Hoshi would lie in that bathtub, from when we bathed each other and sinned underwater, but I would rather die with a ghost from the past, frail as it was now, than the current demon that stood before me, corrupted with the monarchy's plague.

I didn't get that far. In a movement seen by only the furniture, Hoshi whipped out a blade hiding behind her sash and whipped the flat at the side of my head. She hit a homerun with my temple as the baseball, and I was knocked sideways back into bed, grasping at my forehead and screaming obscenities. Wordlessly, she crawled on the bed towards me, weighing down the mattress with her heavy uniform, and pinned me onto the bed. There was nothing sexual about her position, but rather one of dominance, evidenced by the point of the blade she nearly drove in my neck.

"You're done, Sloth," she hissed. She looked foreign and horrible, as if space had consumed her itself: her eyes were glowing bright red like twin, dying red giants, and among her face only the stars speckling her hair were visible. "You know where you're going, boy? It's called the Coronation Jester. Fyora announced it to her warriors this morning, and it was unanimous."

"Even from you?" I challenged. She didn't answer—instead, she curled her upper lip in a snarl.

"Good-night, Sloth." I hardly saw the hilt coming from above, as I was focused on her retreating face. I saw the glint off the handle from the sparse light too late, and felt the cold crush of metal against bone before Hoshi zoomed out like a television screen and blissful blackness filled the space.

Let me tell you a little something about Faerie Queen coronations: they're not all sunshine and lollipops. And there are definitely no rainbows—at least for the Coronation Jester.

The coronation begins with a parade, headed by a band comprised of the most talented instrumentalists in Faerieland. Generally, the buglers with their long horns are the first in the marching procession, as trumpeters are obnoxious faeries and need to blow air into their ego as often as possible. In the middle are a slew of obscure instruments I knew little about; though I was a keyboardist, I had never delved into the intricate study of faerie music, which turns out to be rather complex. The butt of the band, though, is invariably the bass drums, thunking away mindlessly at the enormous raw hide beasts that hang like pot bellies from their chests.

Behind the barreling sound of the drums usually comes some famous magician that I've never bothered reading about but everyone else has. It still befuddles me how faeries are impressed with magic shows even though they could likely learn and complete the same tasks with little effort, but magicians often have—or had—huge fan clubs in Faerieland. Magicians of parade quality are generally male and generically handsome, and every so often pull a female from the crowd to conjure her a rose. Cue swooning from females and projectile vomit from me.

Next come the various inflatable Petpets, with their real counterparts often wandering in flocks beneath. When a specific balloon passes by, barely held to the ground by string, those who had brought that respective Petpet often lift their darling into the air to praise their parachute god. Curiously, I noticed no large Meepit balloon floating through the air. Poor Meep had no idol, no divine power to bow to—he was a forced atheist.

After the Petpets trailed various organizations for faerie youth and member clubs for faerie adults who had all worked to contribute to the parade. (I always found this contribution frivolous, as Jhudora and I had once hacked into the royal family's financial accounts, wherein Jhudora fainted and I discovered our donations and taxes were pointless excesses.) Lines of faeries hovering just above the ground carried banners in neat little lines, displaying their cause on these standards and often tossing sweets or flyers to the crowd. Children coursed along the curb, pushing and shoving each other to get to the scattered candy, or holding baskets above their head, hoping for a faithful shot from a marcher. Even I recall that excitement as a kid, scavenging for your won property. Though our parades were nowhere near as elaborate (often for only annual holidays), the adrenaline and sugar rush were likely the same.

Then came the athletes and assorted athletic organizations. They came in v-formation and once approaching the height of the crowd began complex acrobatics, all players in various clusters synchronized. They soared like fighter jets across the sky with big, muscular pectorals to flex their wings, maneuvering and barrel-rolling effortlessly. In my younger years, I had desired such an ability with a burning passion—only to have my obsession suffocated with my deficient body.

Then proceeded the final leg of the parade. This included the featured part of the parade: the royal family's warriors, the Faerie Council, the Faerie Queen's higher guards, and finally, an over-sized chariot carrying the soon-to-be-crowned Faerie Princess herself. Hoshi was right in front of the chariot, adorned in full battle armor complete with a helmet that shielded her intriguing eyes. One of her arms was aiding her fellow guards laboriously pull the chariot (whose wheels didn't work so well on cloud, and sunk slightly into it) at the pace the warriors had established. Next to her, as I learned, was Valeane, the other faerie elect for the position of Battle Faerie. Though shrouded by her armor, I could tell that beneath she was muscular and ably built, perhaps more than a challenge for Hoshi's magical and physical prowess.

For, you see, I was behind the chariot. It was an open air chariot, so Fyora could receive the blessing from the crowd, shower in the confetti and flowers that were raining from the sky, and send kisses tumbling down to the common people among the crumpled petals. I was behind her, however, slightly below the podium she stood on like a doll on display, rigid and waving as if she were robotic.

I was forced to watch her painfully wooden acting from a cage connected to the chariot like a skiff. The cage wasn't even golden—it was rusty, and tore at my palms with brownish flakes whenever I grasped at the bars, which was often. Blood accumulated alongside the rust, and every so often I would stick my hands beneath my armpits in pain. I was dressed in a ratty, ridiculous garb that clutched at my wings and barely covered my bits and pieces, left open for attack—which the crowd was all too zealous to begin. As soon as they finished cheering their higher registers raw for Fyora, they turned their thunderous boos towards me in damnation. I don't know where they produced the rotten fruit from—perhaps it was supplied to them—but it pummeled me in the thousands, and soon I smelt of rancid produce. Fyora looked back at me and smirked, and then ordered for my tag-on to be pulled further back so she would not have to suffer my stench.

After a few bouts of swearing and giving the crowds the bird, I figured my task to insult them only further encouraged them and became more demure. Still, they didn't let up their shower of rancid fruit flesh, and eventually I became once more the villain and crazy they wanted locked away in that cage, raving, cursing, and wailing.

It seemed forever until we got to the steeple wherein Fyora's coronation would be, especially with fruit juice dripping down my face. Once we arrived, the guards and Pandora (she had accompanied Fyora in the chariot) gently led Fyora down the steps of the chariot onto a red velvet rug that ran into the steeple. The processional was of an agonizing length, and the steeple was already packed full with faeries, some choosing to sit in the standard floor seats and others dangling from the rafters.

I didn't have a choice of my seat. Once everything was unpacked, everyone of significance was crammed inside and guards began rejecting the entrance of further commoners, my cage was carried in by the scruffiest and most suspicious guard, who tossed me in the corner where a pipe was dripping onto my head seemingly wherever I moved. Occasionally, a faerie would cross my path and aim something humiliating at me and give it their best go, point blank. Most faeries were more shameful, though, and as soon as I was at close range and they could see that, indeed, I was a breathing, thinking faerie, their ridiculed ceased—at least until I had become a hated idol again, distanced by the parade.

Though I was biased against it, the coronation was a gorgeous sight. Fyora was decked out glamorously, appearing like a model of contemporary fashion magazines. Her lighter bangs were curled and hanging down the front with her hair pulled tightly in two buns in the back. Atop her head was a princess tiara like a globe, and her body was decked out in a corset with a shroud, and a veil that trailed behind her. She was far more beautiful decked out and four meters away than she was stark naked and up close, a quality that Hoshi had in reverse. While Fyora was an impressionistic painting, moving from afar but fragmented under scrutiny, Hoshi was—or had been—abstract art: jumbled at first glance, but fantastic and complex seen closely.

While Pandora led Fyora halfway up the aisle, she released her in the middle and Fyora, her face twitching, finished the remainder of the steps alone. She seemed to float down the aisle as if a ghost, and the stark white makeup applied to make her appear porcelain only furthered this impression. Wobbling, she ascended the short flight of stairs to a semi-circle of Faerie Council members, dressed in their solemn, crimson robes.

The head Faerie Council member, a faerie named Unula that had a particular hatred for me and a particularly pock-marked face, stepped towards a podium that sat in the middle of them, nodding to Fyora to come towards her. She was visibly trembling as Unula's orders, seeming to shrink in front of the podium in the face of Unula. Unula smiled kindly down at her as if in encouragement, an expression I'd never caught a glimpse of from that craggy countenance. She split open the book where a crimson marker was caught in the pages, and began the ceremony in a voice that penetrated the ancient wood of the steeple.

While this was the first coronation I had attended, and would likely be my last, I couldn't find the motivation to place all of my attention in it as the rest of the crowd was capable of. Perhaps it was the fact that I was in bondage to the future queen in question, or perhaps it was the citrus burning my eyes—but I think it was mostly the utterly devoted look I detected in Hoshi's eyes. The guards had been required to remove their helmets indoors, and now I could see Hoshi's fair face sprouting from the hated outfit. Her eyes were locked on Fyora murmuring her vows, a sort of swoon etched into her face. I wondered for a moment if it was not _me_ fucking Fyora that had upset her—perhaps it really was _Fyora_ fucking me that riled her to boiling point. My heart rotted like the fruit skins around me in this possibility, deflating me more than all the humiliating wrought on my body.

Directly across from her stood Valeane, her helmet now off as well. I could tell it was her by the distinctive chink in the back of her armor—something she had tried to conceal with smelting, but was still clearly visible. Her hair was a shock of lavender-pink that surrounded her head haphazardly, and when she turned her face towards me slightly I saw her skin was bronze like a goddess. Her eyes were fierce and piercing, especially the gaze she shot at me, the Untouchable. Still, there was something unspoken that was attractive about her—attractive in the sense that she pulled you towards you with a sexual magnetism. She was not a girl you loved—she was a girl you romped around the sheets with until she was clawing at your chest for more. This was all too apparent by the animalistic compilation of her features, feral and ferocious, constantly at bay.

Consciously, I began worrying for Hoshi's fate in battle. I didn't remember my study of the coronation celebration clearly, though I did remember a fight for the next Battle Faerie while the other retired during this reception. The part that concerned me was whether or not the battle ended with the loser's life extinguished. While I had feared that may be my fate as well, my anxiety was more directed towards Hoshi, whether or not she had been the one that sentenced me to this degradation. In retrospect, I would find that love surpasses most things that would otherwise spoil a relationship.

Suddenly, there was a wave of applause. The guard watching me hit me through the bars with a pole, and I redirected my attention (at least my eyes) towards the front of the room. This was a pointless endeavor, as the air had already filled with the bodies of faeries giving a standing ovation, which involved clustering into a flying clump in the air. No matter how much I squinted or tried to use what minimal magic I had, I couldn't squint through the solid wall of bodies, all decked out in their Sunday best. (That was one advantage I had to being the Coronation Jester. It was a steaming outside that day, and to celebrate Fyora's coronation, most faeries had willed themselves into the heavy clothes of wintertime holidays. I, in my revolting peasant sheet, was pleasantly comfortable.)

Fyora gave a speech once the crowd settled down. Amplified by her own magic, she sounded much stronger and confident than she looked. I wondered if she had found a spell which added poise and charm to her speeches, as in person she had not been so compelling. She gave the standard promise of a safe and just kingdom, and to protect Faerieland from any outside threat. (So far, no rulers of Faerieland ever had to deal with anything of the sort; however, every coronation in history, as I've read, they do to calm the paranoid public.)

While she used many elaborate words to decorate her speech and left strategic pause between powerful phrases, it left me unimpressed and a smidge more worried about the future of Faerieland, as if I hadn't had enough mistrust of Fyora's administration already. The ignorant masses, though, evidently thought her speech a masterpiece, and cheered with the alacrity to fill twelve more steeples. I thought the noise would shatter the delicate, clouded glass and spill into the streets, where doubtlessly other faeries who had watched the speech remotely were doing their part to contribute to the racket. Fireworks burst from fingertips in the steeple in celebration, and streamers with an unseen origin poured from the ceiling. Secretly, I hoped the fireworks would catch on the streamers and send the steeple into an unforgettable conflagration. Unfortunately for the Jester, it didn't.

Transport to the reception was crude, and involved hastily getting everyone back into line from the royal leg of the parade. Arranging so many people back into order took a great deal of time and a strong leader, two things which the parade had none. Finally, the mob started off by order of Fyora (now Queen Fyora) to charge forwards, and I was almost left behind until one guard remembered my presence. He levitated me back to the chariot, which was beginning to move, and carelessly chained the cage onto the chariot without bothering to put me back onto the little cart with wheels. Therefore, the ride to the reception became one of ear-blistering pain and trying to avoid being continuously hit by the wheel cart from behind, as it was still haphazardly attached by chains.

The reception hall was contained inside Faerie City; as such, it was the longest group movement I've ever experienced. By the time I was reluctantly levitated inside by a pack of guards, my ears could hardly hear people shouting insults at me. Unfortunately, my skin still was full of sensation, and I could still feel the juice evaporating into a sticky film on my skin and the apples knock me square in the temple.

The party began in an impromptu style. We were in a grand ballroom with a gigantic dance floor in the center, and tables covered with fine linens all around. The architecture was dome-like, the ceiling arched and decorated with an intricate mural of classical art. Every wall and orifice seemed to be lined with wood of elaborate carving, depicting all of the elements: vines for earth, the sun for light, candles for fire, rain drops for water, elegant breezes for air and a demonic faces for darkness. The "royal" element was etched in the midst of the elements, looming over them and seeming to join them underneath its massive crown.

The arched windows were lined with orbs of light that floated and slowly spun, and the glass pane framed the falling day outside. Streamers of pure gold and silver decorated the wall far above, trailing down in intricate swirls and braids to the floor.

Each table was supplied with a glowing centerpiece with a holographic Floud floating around in water (magically conjured) and place settings for eight people. Whenever a table was completed with eight guests, food magically appeared on the plates. Assorted obnoxious faeries squealed in delight at this magical feat, but it only made my mouth water for the glazed meats and _fresh_ fruits and vegetables bordering their plates.

The ballroom was big enough to boast different sections; the dancing and dining hall were in the middle, and on the opposite end seemed to be a mini-stage, performers beginning to warm up on it in exotic costume. I was further from the dining and dancing section and nearer to what appeared to be a mini colosseum in miniature. However, it was opened at either end, allowing an absent crowd to finish the rest of the circle. I wondered in excitement if this would be the place where Hoshi and Valeane would battle, but when I inquired to a guard, he answered with a glob of saliva.

At this thought, I began scoring the crowds with my eyes for a sign of Hoshi, or even Valeane. But even though the crowd eventually dispersed and thinned slightly (but not significantly), I could not spot a shock of lavender or luxurious navy blue. Eventually, I gave up on a thorough search, but still kept my eye open in case they appeared in my peripheral vision.

Eventually, my stomach began rumbling with a savageness. While the rest of the party ate their fill, I sat, gripping at my stomach with the claws of starvation. There were remnants of the fruits thrown at me at the bottom of the cage, but they were mostly rancid and smelled putrid. I hardly doubted they were swarming with disease—but faeries, magical as they were, had no conception of germs.

When I requested food from the guard, I received another strategic spit in the eye. Wiping it out of my eye and handing him some choice words, I turned away from him huffily. I knew my tantrums would do no good, but my reaction was almost impulsive.

After a few more minutes of sulking, I finally managed to put my fingers around some of the fruit flesh on the floor of my cage. I picked at it warily, hoping that some horrible creature would not come crawling out. When it remained still in my hands, I gave it a good sniff, and decided that wasn't a great idea if I wanted something in my stomach. I took a deep breath, and shoved the food in my mouth, holding my nose to avoid taste. It slithered its way slimily down my throat, and I nearly gagged when I accidentally opened my nostrils for air. Still, I managed to force it down, and my stomach became quieter. My stomach seemed content to stay empty if that was the fare I was offering it.


	9. Hogwash

It was after guests were beginning to stand expectantly on the dance floor for music to start that Fyora began to speak to the people. Up until then, she had been sitting tentatively on a throne behind the DJ who was still setting up, checking whether or not his music was adept enough for mixing. Fyora had looked as if she were about to explode from the ants crawling up and down her metaphorical pants--she wore her dress, still, but her hair had been relaxed and the train removed. She looked much more comfortable taking the microphone from a baffled DJ, who immediately began warning her that he had not finished testing his equipment.

"My subjects," she said, smiling with forced ingenuity. She gave a loving sweep of her hand, and I almost died laughing from the utter insincerity of it all. Everyone, though, slightly drunk from the abundant wine or sleepy from the excessive food, replied with loving replies, oblivious to her dishonesty. "Tonight, I have a special event for all of you. Any of you who know the illustrious history of the coronation reception know that there are two special events that everyone looks forward to."

I began listening attentively at this point. I knew that the battle for the title of Battle Faerie would be one of them, and the details would be outlined. Also, I might be able to catch a hint to my fate.

"The first event"—she held up one finger dramatically, pausing for effect—"is to decide who will be my utmost protector from the outside world. My ultimate body guard—the Battle Faerie." There was modest applause here, and Fyora gave time for the clapping to die down. "You all know our former Battle Faerie resigned as soon as my mother, the late Queen Faerie VI, perished. This has left me without security, and as such, I have had an intensive staff of guards around me as of late. However, once this competition has finished, I will have one companion with me at all times."

'What about the other?' I wanted to scream, but Fyora waited for a moment to let everything sink in. Once the crowd began to murmur again as if demanding speech, Fyora spoke up once more.

"The loser of this competition will remain as a guard at my side." The tension in my shoulders disappeared, and a relieved smile stretched across my face. No matter the outcome, Hoshi would be all right. "This transitions nicely into the second event that all look forward to. While the winner of the Battle Faerie competition will be shuttled away for paperwork, the defeated will be able to spend their aggravation on our whipping boy." Without warning, Fyora held out a hand in my direction, and the mass' eyes fell on me. I swallowed, feeling a fish in a bowl about to go belly-up. "Also known as, the Coronation Jester."

My stomach began an artful practice of tying knots with itself, two sides conflicting with another. On the odd chance Valeane lost, I was dead meat—literally. It was coming back to me slowly now, but I distinctly remembered the barbarous nature of the second half of these events. The loser, in defeat, often expelled more rage than necessary on their defenseless opponent, and practically carved their gravestone. It was a more common practice than not to kill the Coronation Jester in recent years, and a fear for my life erupted in my throat.

On the other hand, Hoshi was, in my mind, more likely to lose. I didn't doubt she could give me a lashing I wouldn't forget, but a part of me didn't think she would go so far as murder. After all, I had practically paid for all her necessary expenses throughout her time at my place, and for her to take my life as well would be a crime even Hoshi couldn't commit.

I brooded for a while until suddenly my cage was being pushed into the arena, much to my surprise. The guards were shoving my cage into place next to the throne in the arena, levitating me up a few flights of stairs to set it in its proper space. The colosseum around me was beginning to fill with people rapidly as the faeries began to realize that the action was not on the dance floor for the time being. The sound of bustle began to slowly crescendo as more people were added to the crowd, until it was a full-on roar. Faeries began to send some people back to the tables to grab some leftovers as snack food, and children raced down and up the bleachers in the few open spots, giggling manically. Their charming obliviousness and naiveté made them precious to me, even if they were the spawn of adults who loathed me.

As soon as Fyora approached, flanked by two guards, the crowd was lulled into silence. She walked delicately to her throne and sat down, putting both arms regally on the arm rests. She seemed to be getting adjusted to her role as supreme royalty rather than a subordinate to her mother, her back far more arched and her eyes tending to look down her nose. She turned to either guard and then eyed those in the back to ensure their readiness for formalities.

"Guards, please bring forth our contenders."

The masses made two breaks in their continuum of chaos in order to let a figure through, guided by at least one threatening, male guard. Each figure was female in appearance, and though they wore no armor, it was clear they were dressed for battle. Pulled in front of the crowds by the guards, they were put in the center of the stage for all to see.

Fyora stood up and everyone followed suit. Fyora seemed surprised by this for a moment, and then seemed to relax, remembering she had taken her mother's role. A chuckle seemed to tickle at her lips as she began to announce the warriors.

"To my left—one of our veteran guards and warriors, adept with weapons of all kinds and studied in magic some have only dreamed of. The fierce and beautiful Valeane!"

Valeane stepped forward from her guard and smiled harshly. It wasn't so much of a smile as it was baring of her teeth, like a dog snarling. The crowd cheered wildly anyway, and I gave a few modest claps. She was fitted into a loose-fitting body suit of a stretchy green material, some random tears marring the fabric in non-offensive places. In her hands she held what appeared to be two sais with hilts of an intricate, leafy design. Though her hair was a different color than most, I was fairly confident that Valeane was an earth faerie. Earth faeries were fairly common in my area, as well as Faerie City. A surge of confidence filled my veins—Hoshi's odds were losing weight rapidly.

"To my right—a new but quickly rising warrior and guard with a knack for long spears and magic, the mysterious and illustrious Hoshiya!"

The crowd seemed to be more interested in Hoshi, their screams a shade louder, but backing off when Valeane looked displeased with Hoshi's popularity. I looked over to Hoshi, trying to do it carefully so arrows would not sabotage my heart. She wore a skin-tight leotard with red cords at the shoulders, waist, and hips, accentuating her form. A red V spanned the blue chest, and the material on her legs transitioned from the blue of the body to the dark navy of her hair, accented by stars so it looked like her legs faded to nothing. It was the outfit she would soon be notorious for.

Additionally, I noticed, for the first time, that her hair was cut—she had held it up in a bun before, so it had been impossible to distinguish the length. The cut looked as if it had been done by a blind man with a rusty razor, crooked, choppy, and chock full of split ends. Yet somehow it sort of fit this new persona she had adopted—edgy yet disciplined, as it was short enough to stay out of her way. She had finally made her full transformation physically to the Neopian defender she would someday be; my transformation, however, still had to wait.

"Contenders, will you take your places?"

As if choreographed for this moment, Hoshi took the right side of the field and Valeane the left.

"Get set."

Valeane held up her sais, as if readying them for attack position. Hoshi thrust forward her hands and closed her eyes. Her hair waved a little as magic exuded from her body and a long spear began to formulate at the tips of her fingers. When it had fully solidified, she took a grasp on the wooden rod part of the weapon and flipped the spear end towards Valeane. The spear was ornately built, a crescent moon in shape with a star fitted in the middle. Despite its fanciful nature, it was still undoubtedly dangerous.

"Begin!"

No one moved—besides Fyora, who took her seat. (The rest of the audience, at her command, had taken their seats earlier.) Valeane and Hoshi stood stiff in their starting positions, staring straight in each other's eyes. The audience's behinds were aching on the edges of their seats (the stands were made of wood, with no cushion) and I leaned forward on my cage, grasping the bars without regard to the blood it sent trickling down them.

Valeane was the first opponent to act. I figured her for a fan of battles cries and charges, but she moved silently and moved through air as if it were calm water. Once she was within striking distance of Hoshi, she thrust both her sais forward, seemingly at the same spot. As Hoshi blocked it, catching both sais on their curved hilts, I saw that Valeane had shifted the position of each in the last second: one was near Hoshi's face while the other jabbed at her from below.

Hoshi spun her spear to untangle the sais and while Valeane was regaining her grip on them, Hoshi struck. She held her spear horizontally and shoved upwards towards Valeane's chin. Valeane barely managed to duck under the attack, and then flew at Hoshi from beneath it, slashing with the sais. Hoshi jumped upwards to avoid the attack and did a grace flip over Valeane's head, landing near Valeane's back.

Valeane, seeming to sense her opponent's trickery, made a back flip that ended with her in a handstand. She kicked with her available feet, managing to connect unexpectedly with Hoshi's face. Hoshi recovered quickly, but this still allowed time for Valeane to flip back to her feet and slash upwards with her sai, leaving a scrape and tear on Hoshi's body.

As they continued to fight, I noticed that their fight was more like dancing than melee warfare. Each attack seemed to ooze into the next, giving the sensation of pre-meditated moves. I had read about this technique somewhere, a type of fighting style called Faefu. It involved transferring the energy lost from dodging an attack into a graceful counterattack, so that the fighter flowed from one move to the next.

The combatants weren't merely limited to the ground; this was where Faefu had an advantage over other groundbound forms of martial arts. Soon after they began fighting, the two took to the wing, spiraling up into the air like butterflies in spring. The crowd gave appreciative "ooos" at the elegant danger that ascended to the ceiling, appearing like a whirlwind of colored wings and steel. Many faeries took to the wing to see detailed action, hovering parallel to where Hoshi and Valeane flew, braided together in battle. These crowds had to disperse and maneuver quickly, though, for Hoshi and Valeane would often exceed the limits of their makeshift circles, locked together and soaring without direction.

Every so often, a shower of blood would rain to the ground, and the crowd gave a synchronized gasp. Some perverts tried to collect the blood, racing out into the middle of the arena and drunkenly trying to scoop it up, but they were quickly chastised by guards and returned to their seat. I cringed and craned my neck upwards when these scarlet showers came, squinting to see who had suffered damage. It was useless—from my vantage point, they appeared like a set of wings and feet, shifting and struggling for nothing.

Finally, an angel fell from the heavens, knocked down by a divine strike. Throughout their freefall, I could not tell who it was—the crowd leaned forward and gasped, waiting for the form to be identified. It hit the ground with a sickening thud, suggesting that she had been turned to dead weight. I practically threw my head through the bars of the cage to see who it was, vision obscured by faeries standing in front of me. I didn't get a chance to see the body before Fyora was on her feet, instructing the masses to sit down with a wave of her hand, while simultaneously announcing the victor.

"Valeane has fallen! Our new Battle Faerie: Hoshiya!"

The crowd erupted into an explosion of cheers, confetti and balloons tumbling down from the ceiling. Hoshi, who was still in the air, began to descend slowly, a bewildered look on her face. Her hair was disheveled and her face bruised like a boxer, bleeding at the lip. Her clothes were in tatters, barely rags from the battle, and even her wings showed scars and puncture wounds from the sais.

Yet as soon as she touched the ground, she was boosted into the air by the welcoming hands of ecstatic crowds, especially those who had been gunning for her the whole time. Hoshi looked baffled at first, but then a smile began to unveil itself across her face until she was full-on beaming, allowing herself to be lifted high into the air by the approving mass. The occasional crowd-member tossed her a healing vial, and Hoshi drank thirstily from them, her wounds healing as she was traded among the crowd's hands.

Valeane, meanwhile, was being peeled from the ground by guards who held healing potions to her lips, practically forcing the purple liquid down her throat. Through this, Valeane, much to my dismay, was slowly regaining consciousness, the open, oozing wounds tattooed on her skin beginning to fold into themselves and heal. Her eyes fluttered open, and looked around hazily at the guards surrounding her. At first, she barely seemed to register anything—until her eyes wandered to the exalted Hoshi. A fire rekindled in her eyes, she seemed to try and wrest herself from the guards' arms for a rematch, but they held her down, assuring she would have an opportunity to release her rage.

That opportunity was me.

Once the crowd had calmed down, Hoshiya was instructed by two guards to walk ceremoniously in front of Fyora. Hoshi held her head down as she approached, evaporating the long spear in her hand. The crowd settled back down, and Hoshi kneeled reverently in front of Fyora. Fyora turned to a line of guards that had formed, the lowest ranking furthest from Fyora and the highest ranking closest, and they slowly passed down a sword nestled on a gigantic velvet pillow. When it came to the last guard, she held the pillow up to Fyora, and the Faerie Queen took the sword gently from the cushion, holding the blade above Hoshi's head. Hoshi bowed her head as if to receive a blessing.

"In the name of the Faerie Council, and the Royal Faerie Family"—here Fyora began touching Hoshi's shoulders gently with the flat tip of the sword, until she finally anointed her head—"I garner upon you the title of our Kingdom's three hundredth and first Battle Faerie."

I wanted to scream out and throw Hoshi aside, taking the edge of the sword to my body rather than her take the flat. As soon as she had been declared, a tectonic plate shifted inside our relationship. While we had become alienated and distant throughout these past weeks, a earthquake was now irreversibly marring the landscape of our union, creating fissures that could not be healed.

The crowd knew not to be as wild during this official ceremony, and clapped politely for Hoshi's apparent knighting. Fyora bent over and lifted Hoshi's chin up so her face stared into hers. Hoshi appeared frightened but Fyora's smile seemed to calm her. Fyora stood back, and then held out the sword for Hoshi to take. "This is the sword of the Battle Faerie before you, and for thousands of generations past. Wield it with honor and the Kingdom's blessing."

Hoshi took it breathlessly, only allowing her fingertips to touch the weapon. She looked as if she would faint in awe—and perhaps rightly so. Although the sword was notched and not the most modern, efficient thing in Faerieland, it possessed a certain aura of power that radiated from it, a power of an object that had slain many trespasser and criminal lives. My heart ached at seeing the transformation in her. Some horrible light had been bestowed upon her that I didn't understand, transferred to her body through three touches of that sword. Now she held it in her hands, and would carry it with her eternally—a manifestation of the change in her I could not accept.

With Hoshi still handling the sword as if it were a baby, four guards ushered her out of the ballroom, Fyora announcing that Hoshi would be debriefed of her duties by the Royal Advisor Pandora. The crowd's eyes followed Hoshi until she was out of the room, and then zeroed in on the fuming Valeane, who had been reluctantly standing amongst two guards during the ceremony. While I only had regret in my heart while Hoshi had been knighted, now my heart sunk to the depths of my intestines in cold-blooded fear.

Though I now wondered if Hoshi would not have killed me if she had lost, I knew for sure that Valeane had nothing but my blood running down her sais in mind, and that if some miracle didn't shine on my head, there would be nothing left to shine on. Fyora smirked at me as soon as Hoshi was out of sight, and that was indication enough of what came next.

"Now, for our next competition—Valeane, the defeated, will now regain her status through our very own Coronation Jester!"

The crowd howled in laughter as they turned to me, paying little attention to Valeane. Valeane was stepping out into the arena, healed back to perfect condition except her mood. A renewed fierceness was in her eyes—yet this time her victory was assured. The ferocity was merely to turn a massacre into a bloodbath.

The guards came over to my cage and opened the lock. I stayed on the opposite end of the cage, refusing to come out with swears and kicks. They waited impatiently for a moment, and then three came into the cage to manually remove me, holding me at the arms with their muscles like steel. They dragged me down, quite literally kicking and screaming, to the middle of the arena while fruit rained over their head. I tried to bite the guards that held me prisoner, but their hides seemed to be made of the armor that encased them, with their hearts forged in the same fashion.

One of the guards bent down to the ground and touched the spot with her open palm that seemed to be precisely the middle of the battle stage. Slowly, she raised her hand up and revealed a metal pole rising from the ground, covered with a dried, rusty substance. Attached to the top of the pole were chain links, their ends still buried deep in the ground. When the guard had removed the pole so that it was about hip-high, she began to tug gently at the chain links, which eased up from the ground to reveal shackles.

The guards that still held me pushed me forwards, and offered my wrists to the one who had produced the pole from the ground. I watched in terror as the shackles were clamped and locked around my wrists. The guard adjusted them with a stroke of her hand big enough to be loose but small enough to be inescapable. With my arms secured, the guards seemed to be satisfied with their work and retreated from where I stood, vulnerable.

Every shriek and encouraging scream from the audience in Valeane's favor rang like the squeals of a violin string in a horror movie. The adrenaline was rampant in my veins, pressing against my skin like air to the rubber of a balloon. Both a heightened sense of death and an animalistic fear combined inside my brain to send it into an intelligible frenzy, only allowing my lips to spurt out whimpers and nonsense. Pathetic as I sounded, a clear terror did penetrate my body. Never before had I felt something so pure and unshakeable, cementing itself in every cell in my body. On the odd chance I walked away alive, that dread would still linger within my body until it atrophied its way out months later.

Fyora calmed the crowds, her ability to control the people's mouths having increased in the span of one night. She gave a hateful look towards me, a supportive look towards Valeane, and then turned her attention to the whole of the crowd. "My subjects, our Coronation Jester has given us a rousing performance and a great deal of belly laughs. Unfortunately, all things must come to an end. Valeane will now display that she is quite qualified for the position of Battle Faerie, if Hoshiya were to perish. Valeane, you may start your demonstration."

Valeane wiped some sweat off her nose and looked at me. The crowds continued to jeer at my state, despite the fact that my death sentence had been written. I looked amongst the crowds for a second, trying to find a friendly face—a face that spelled remorse, or horror at the act that was about to unfold. All their countenances blended together, forming a super faerie that only desired to scream and laugh at my face, to throw fruit at my freshly fallen corpse. The world had turned its back on me even as I faced it with desperation and hopelessness, holding out my arms for help.

This was my last impression of the crowds before I felt Valeane's fingers around my neck. Apparently, a death by her sais would be too impersonal—so instead she grasped my throat like it was a stress ball. Her hands were long and surrounded my neck, but the added force, I ascertained, was contributed from a magic spell, pulling the air from my lungs. I began to flail a bit against the asphyxiation, but I soon concluded this only made me feel weaker, and used the limited oxygen I had left too quickly.

So I became still as Valeane, her face in a cruel grimace, pushed me to the crowd and pressed my neck into the stage, utterly silent. The crowd contributed background noise, putting the curses into Valeane's mouth that she did not speak. I could do little more than look her in the eye, the fear draining color from my face. I kept my eyes courageous as possible, not daring to look away—for I knew as soon as I found an easier object than Valeane to stare at (namely, anything) I would not be able to re-muster the bravery to stare her down.

She kept me without air until the world around me became darker, and faerie's voices mixed into a muddled fray. I could hear Valeane speak her first words to me in the distance, but I was unable to distinguish their nature. The world in my peripheral vision became black, and I saw through a tunnel with no light but Valeane's vicious eyes at the end, damning me to all sorts of brimstone underworlds.

The sensation of suffocating ceased soon after, and I was baffled to find I was still conscious. My mouth stayed open and tried to spoon in the air my body required, but it was difficult to shove in all the air I required without popping my lungs. Valeane seemed to have disappeared, and I was alone in my quest to regain oxygen to a functioning level. I was paralyzed, unable to move except for the heaves of my chest, but that didn't seem to concern me. My only troubles lay in distributing enough air to eradicate the haziness from my vision and the beginnings of death in my muscles and brain.

Then, the framed view of my world yielded a picture. It was the face of Valeane, coming at me at high speeds. From my limited comprehension, she seemed to move in slow, strobe-light motion, jerking towards my chest with the blade of her sai pointed downwards.

At this point, I was complacent with the concept of death, and stared at the sai mildly with the hints of a smile. Demise seemed like a mother coming to sing me a lullaby—a mother I never had and a song I'd never heard, ambient, droning, pillow-like in my ears. I saw my life flashing before my eyes—not exactly mine, but a version thereof, a version seen from a third person perspective, objectively. I pitied myself the child, and loathed myself the adult while simultaneously playing in the puddles of childhood on a rainy day and relaxing in a blissful high with Jhudora. Death came slowly, I realized at that moment—it was a distant and warm experience, like a symphony played piano. It was slow and swelling summer day, punctuated only by the painful accents of the physical world.

But something interrupted my sanguine moment in the sun. The sai was suddenly knocked out of my view, which was quickly expanding, and with it the hand that held it. However, the arm still remained, a circle of blood and bone replacing where the hand had been. I heard a scream and registered it as Valeane's, a scream of pain and suffering. I myself only felt a cold sensation on my head, and then the feeling of evaporating that I felt only once in my life. It was the sense of teleportation, being thrown across a distance in high speeds in the form of particles, bodiless yet connected.

I formulated and arrived. At first, I could not identify where I was—it was cold beneath me, and smoke obscured most of my immediate surroundings. It was harder to breathe in there, but I managed to regain strength enough to sit up, my eyes blackening and sparkling in front of me. Objects began to manifest themselves through the smoke—and to my surprise, I discovered I was in the lab, utterly alone. The safe where I had stored the chemicals that killed that Feepit was behind me, and I was on one of the tables where we put test tubes of chemicals. I jumped off quickly, scared that my skin might have been contaminated with chemicals in the meantime.

I wondered briefly who had been so kind to save me, but it mattered little at that moment. My mind, as soon as I saw Hoshi knighted, had fallen to one sinister thought: the path that so many other tortured geniuses had walked, with varying amounts of success.

I walked around carefully, my feet bare and the floor with a possibility of being sprinkled with glass shards. Though I was cautious, a trance mode fell over my steps, as if I were walking through a graveyard. So many memories floated past me in the smoke, a terrible nostalgia overcoming me. I walked over the steps where Hoshi had followed me with Feepit in hand, now both of them, one physically and one spiritually, fallen through my fingers. A depression burrowed itself in my stomach, and I found my body wandering back to the safe that contained the chemicals so lethal to those Feepits.

I opened it, hardly aware of what my body was doing. Though I lacked gloves, goggles, or a lab coat, my body was so conditioned to handling the chemicals that I removed them flawlessly, depositing the test tubes onto the experiment table. While there had been a plethora of test tubes before with the solution, now there was only one row. I could only assume that they were keeping these for further research, and had destroyed the rest for safety purposes.

My hands were moving by themselves. They were dumping the chemical into a vacuum packed container, shoving on the lid that helped to pump out the air. My feet led me over to the case where syringes and hypodermic needles were stored, and I opened it with the combination remembered. They hadn't changed it, as one needed an ID that functioned as a card key to get into the institute—and instead of changing all the locks, they had merely deactivated my card key. So it was still easy access for me, and soon, with an assembled syringe, I was diving the needle into the rubber seal of the vacuum packed solution, filling it up to the limit of the syringe.

We had given the Feepits a quarter of this dose and it had killed them. Feepits generally had the capacity to deal with anything a faerie could, and reacted similarly to certain chemicals. Four times the dose was a death sentence for both a Feepit and a faerie, and that was my intention.

I had always mocked people with suicidal intentions before—laughed at their petty angst for lives that were lived and taken for granted, for people who bathed in bourgeois comfort yet couldn't stand to enjoy it. I had never known much more than the orphanage, my crappy little pad, the record store, and the lab, but somehow, before, I had managed to stay content. Perhaps it was due to the disconnection I regarded everyone with. I had lived a life where people where always an arm's length away, smiling at me with only vague recognition and leaving me unbothered. This had aided in not feeling any pain from hurtful comments hurled at me daily, and not being bothered if I was brushed off for an appointment or date with somebody. It even helped in the occasional lay—I didn't feel any deep connection to the person, even if we had been dating, and fucking became a set of healthy pushups that ended in a wave of pleasure. I lived life with a foot outside the door, detached enough to get by.

But Hoshi had changed all that. Coming into my life, she grabbed it by the edges and turned it around like a merry-go-round until it landed emotionally one-eighty degrees backwards. Emotion started emerging in relationships where I didn't want them to, leaking out like a house without sealant. It wasn't until now that I realized Hoshi had opened all of the doors to the room I had isolated myself within just so she could enter anyway she pleased. Yet she forgot to close and lock them on the way out, and now others serenaded around my private room and crushed my belongings. She had left that cubicle of comfort in the most disarray—everything was rearranged now to her liking, but now she had abandoned it and left me to clean up the soft, whitish powder she had left everywhere.

I needed to close them myself, but there were too many to shut on my own. So I would escape that room—escape that house—aided by the chemical I had made for other purposes. Something made for the benefit of faeries was finally doing just that—killing an abomination to their race.

I ripped off a strip of the pathetic clothes I had been forced to wear and tied it around my arm expertly. The veins popped out of my skin, seeming to beg for a hit of smack. I would satisfy their craving for a needle, but not for that exquisite opiate. I found my favorite vein and plunged the needle inside at an angle, pulling back what I had left for that familiar blossom of blood within the syringe. Once I saw it within the murky depth of chemicals, I pushed it back in along with the whole of the contents of the solution, making my vein expand slightly and then go back down as it sucked it into my bloodstream.

The changes began immediately, unlike the slight period of stagnancy that the Feepits had experienced, likely due to the overload of chemicals I had pumped into my body. It began with my hair falling out in clumps, heaping like a pile of green hay at my feet. I kicked it around to stave the fear I was experiencing, partially produced by the churning feeling in my stomach. Soon my head was mostly bald save for three sparse clumps from my forehead, which when I tugged at to remove stayed stubbornly in place.

I felt my muscles begin to stack on top of each other, like a sculpture artist packing clay on their anatomical masterpiece. The skin encasing these muscles began to wilt away to a sickly olive green color, spreading across my body like a fast-acting plague. I touched this new skin, and its texture was rough and calloused, unlike the soft skin I had enjoyed as a faerie. I was too terrified to scream—and yet I had no sensation of regret, just of wonder of the changes overcoming my body. Soon my body outgrew the rags that I wore, ripping them in places as my bones groaned and stretched to accommodate for the added muscles on my frame.

My pinkie began to wither on my hands, and I wondered how I would ever be able to play piano. This was the least of my worries—my feet seemed to be stretching and forming into some sort of raptor claws, keeping me much more balanced but giving even a greater sense of mutation.

My facial features were some of the last things to go. I felt my vision change—the iris expand to fill the whites of my eyes and my pupil following suit, allowing me to see detail I couldn't before. The teeth inside my mouth began to grow sharper and grind against each other, and my cheek bones lifted themselves until I had a look of cruel nobility. I didn't know it at that time, though. All I felt was my bone structure shifting like it was made of sand, feeling as if it were melting.

In a way, I was relieved at the fact that I was clearly not dead, unless my point of view had not changed between the transition of life to afterlife. Halfway through the transformation, a part of me had lurched and regretted my decision—I wanted to _live._ Now, as I checked my pulse, I was elated to found I did, perhaps more than before. As a steroid, too, the chemical had worked perfectly—I was far more muscular, and fit for heavy lifting.

I was surprised, at first, at the lack of pain the transformation wrought upon me. Though my perspective had changed, thanks to the additional third of a meter I had gained in height, no sensation wracked my body except a slight tingling. The vein where I had shot up was cold rather than hot, as the chemical had been chilling in the safe moments before, but there was nothing painful about the chill. In fact, it almost gave a slight adrenaline rush to the experience, making it fearful yet exciting.

My interest fell to a mirror, an object I had formerly loathed—and would soon have a further reason to think it vile. I fumbled around the lab station in front of me, opening the cabinets that weren't locked. Finally, I found one someone had irresponsibly left open with a mirrors used for a light reflection experiment within. Touching the mirror, I was filled with memories of that experiment—how it had been my very first, so simple yet nerve-wracking. The way I felt after that experienced had been and was indescribable besides the two words 'pure bliss.'

When I looked at myself in the mirror, any form of bliss melted away.


	10. Chapter 10

If my hideousness had not been bad enough before, it was now multiplied a hundred-fold. Minutes ago, I may have been able to stand a mirror with some scowling chagrin, but now my visage nearly burned my eyes. I had to look at it sideways and gradually shift my eyes forward to adjust to it, not wanting the truth so blatantly. But the mirror did not lie, and what I had become was undeniable—it was read in my fangs, my wild eyes and my chicken hair. I had become a monster.

I broke the mirror and screamed. The scream would not stop, no matter how I willed it—it was as if my soul was releasing all the tension and frustration I had felt towards my looks throughout the years.

I ran—ran far away from the place of my atrocious creation--ran with the swiftness of an athletic sprinter, my calves and thighs now ready for excessive activity. Yet I hate them for that, hated them for being so despicable and horrible. I ripped at my arms as I ran, loathing that withered skin more than ever now. Mostly, though, I tore at my face as if a beast, trying to rip off this counterfeit of a countenance. What the mirror showed me wasn't me—it was a sham. Perhaps this was all a surreal dream, and I sought, by willing my eyes wide, to abort it. I could not.

My house was far, when I had been weaker, but now the journey took me about the same time it did on the Moltenore. It was a harder walk, as my feet sunk deep into the clouds, as if threatening to release me to the hostile planet below—a place repugnant and fitting for a creature of my gruesome figure. Still I forged forth, as a swamp monster through his blasphemous lagoon, green and appearing only vaguely sentient.

I burst through the door, barely clothed. The scraps they had given me as clothing now no longer fit and had also been torn as I ran—my package, proportional to my sinister frame, dangled out beneath it. I didn't have a key, but merely my hands and arms proved strong enough to burst through the frail and cheap stature of my door, old and worm worn.

The door flew open so hard, one of the latches popped off and it dangled from the bottom hinge. I ignored it and stomped forward, my paces making booming noises on the kitchen floor. Everything in that house was normal but me—it should have calmed me to see such an accustomed setting. Instead, it enraged me. The fact that I did not fit into its dimensions the same way I had infuriated me. I lifted dishes from the drying wrack and threw them across the floor, bellowing with a bestial tone. I stomped on them furiously, barely feeling the shards digging into my ogreish feet.

That's when Meep appeared. He entered casually, as if nothing was happening, took a draught from his water bowl, and then sat on his hind feet to look at me sternly. The stupid beast had unwisely been taught to be afraid of nothing in his short lifetime, as he seemed to always be able to control me with those saucer-plate eyes. In my current state, hypnosis was no longer an option for his defense. Something in the chemical had made me immune to it, and I reached down and grasped Meep with one hand, holding him so hard his eyes nearly popped.

"Don't try that bullshit on me," I growled, tensing my hold. "I'm Doctor Frank-fucking-Sloth, you little piece of shit. And no stupid pet is going to hypnotize _me_!"

I put the other hand on top of the one that held Meep, my grip centered around his chubby neck. I was filled with an unexplainable rage—something that couldn't be satiated through normal means of relief. I needed blood on my hands; I needed to be quenched through an extinguished life. The voice was booming in my head, becoming a real voice that echoed off the walls—it encouraged my destructive behavior, whispering the decadently devious consequences in my ear.

I cracked Meep's neck with a deft twist of my hands. It was like cracking pretzels—so easy, so delicate. The body fell limp in my hands, and the dark, wide eyes filled quickly with emptiness. A finally puff of air came out of Meep's body, as if in defiance of death, and then the body became fully still.

I had no time to think of my actions before the pain came. Though it sewed shut the lips of that horrible voice, it convulsed throughout me unexplainably. I dropped Meep without a second thought and curled over in agony, grasping my stomach. It wasn't just my gut that was aching, though—that was just the center of my anguish. My whole body seemed to be burning, as if my heart were a volcano, pumping lava through my veins.

The pain found its favorite spot on my wings, which had not yet diminished by aid of the chemical. Now, they deteriorated. I strained my neck to try and watch their demise—the crumpled from my back like a paper with a flame stuck to it, growing old and brown and then seeming to be made of ash before disassembling themselves and disappearing completely.

I crumpled at the knees as if a divine hand had folded me, and then fell to my side. The intensity of the pain was so throbbing that I could barely breathe, let alone scream. It was like electrocution—all the muscles in my body seized at once, conspiring to crush my insides. I could barely manage a final breath before my brain too seemed to turn against me, and shut off all senses, including consciousness. It gave me a last fragmented thought in ponder on in the form of a fading face: a fading, gorgeous face, with flowing dark hair, tan skin, and entrancing eyes.

When I woke up, I was on a lab table. I only distinguished it by the feel—my eyes were limited to looking at the cheap lights above, blinding me in turn with the white, sterilized ceiling.I wondered if Hell was something like being experimented on constantly, tied up and unable to control the gross mutations various chemicals made your body contort to.

Yet much to my annoyance, I had survived yet another encounter with death—surprising, too, as I would have suspected the Royal Faerie Police to inspect my house for any signs and upon seeing my body, arrest me and throw me in a dungeon or worse. Somehow, I had managed to dodge the bullet yet again—unless this lab table proved a worse fate.

"He's awake."

A voice trembled through the air, filled with the cracked nature of tears. The voice was unnervingly familiar, but with the restructuring of my ears I could not quite place where I had heard it. My nerves seemed to be scorched, but a majority of the blistering, stabbing pain had faded away and I was left with only a dull ache that seemed to originate in my bones. When I turned my head, though, a searing pain shot down my spine, and I thought better than to turn it again. Instead, I ventured speaking.

"Who's there?"

Instead of answering me, the speaker stepped forward, leaning over the table for me to see. My heart managed to twist itself in complicated yoga positions at the sight of that face—the face I had seen moments before only black consumed my vision—Hoshi.

I reeled away from her, suddenly unconcerned with the spikes of pain movement caused me. My hands automatically covered my face to spare her of my mutated features, fearing I would scare her away. I spoke, muffled, through my stubby, reduced fingers, not daring to catch a glance of Hoshi.

"Get out of here!" I demanded. "Now!" Now that my mind had settled, I notice that I spoke an octave lower, the transformation apparently effecting my vocal chords.

Hoshi persisted. From her footsteps and the hand on my shoulder (now covered with a flimsy lab coat, as was the rest of my body, besides a pair of slacks that didn't quite fit), I knew she had come closer. Her hand trembled on my shoulder—whether with fear or sadness was undetermined. "Frank." She spoke softly, and her voice seemed to gargle with tears. "Whoever you are, answer me. Are you Frank?"

"Go away!" I replied, unwilling to answer truthfully or tell a lie.

"Whoever you are"—here Hoshi swallowed—"I found you in Dr. Frank Sloth's house just before the Royal Faerie Police got there. And let me tell you, they were royally pissed that they couldn't find you—and that I teleported you in the first place."

"You _what_?" I was unable to contain my astonishment at this remark, and rolled over to face Hoshi fully, lifting my hands from my face. There she stood, her face badly bruised as if beaten, with the addition of tears rushing down her face, mingling with a few specks of blood. She was unarmed, and though her clothes were ripped from a seeming brawl, and her hair stuck in all directions, she was just as radiant as she had been the day I met her. She forced a smile at me turning over, not even grimacing at my twisted face.

"I knew it was you."

"_You_ were the one who teleported me? I figured it was just some random pitying person from the crowd."

"Nope." She smiled genuinely. "That cold feeling was me touching you with my blade … though sorry if I got a bit of blood on you. I meant to knock the sai out of Valeane's hand, but I ended up taking … a little bit too much off." She gave an embarrassed look sideways.

"You cut off someone's hand!"

"Hey, she was a bitch anyway!" defended Hoshi with a toss of her hands. "If some sore loser thinks she's gonna kill _my_ boyfriend, she has another thing coming!" My heart swelled at her mention of me being her significant other, but I managed to suppress my boyish smile (which would probably be a more grisly smile on my current face).

"So what'd they do with your position as the Battle Faerie?"

"Well, first they healed Valeane … and then they fired me and replaced me with her." She beamed suddenly. "I'm not allowed within a fifty meter radius of Faerie Castle anymore."

"And you're … proud of this? I thought you wanted that Battle Faerie position more than anything."

"You're an idiot." She bent down towards me, a slight smile on her face. "Nothing gets between me and my man."

"That's news to me, after weeks of alienation." I pulled away from her, managing to sit up. "And please don't touch me. I wouldn't touch me. I don't want you to catch my disease of disgusting."

"It's not a disease." A voice came from the other side of me, and I looked over. Hoshi didn't seem caught off guard. Sitting serenely on the other side of the table was my director, the very same who had issued me a relief phone call. She was dressed in a lab coat that perfectly fitted her, and her dark purple hair was pulled back into a sloppy bun. Her eyes looked a little bit fatigued, but other than that she still pulsed her royal aura. "You injected yourself with the chemicals." She gestured towards the table behind her, which still held the test tubes and the empty hypodermic needle. "Rather irresponsible for a doctor, I'd say, but our policy is the best sentient subject is yourself."

"Dr. Quilla!" I shouted in shock. "Why are you here too?"

"Well, Hoshiya over here was smart enough to identify you as yourself despite the obvious … change in appearance. Of course, I knew the Royal Faerie Police would search here as soon as they were done with your house, so we stored you briefly in the freezers while they searched. Don't worry, though, we got you out before any permanent damage could be done," she assured me when an eyebrow involuntarily rose on my face. "Hoshi stayed with you all night right here, while I took some blood samples to see if the damage is reversible."

"Is it?"

"How do I say this? No." Dr. Quilla, being a scientist, was not very good with subtleties. "I must say, though, I can't imagine what inspired you to inject yourself with them in the first place. Especially after seeing those Feepits …"

"Suicide." I wasn't very good with subtleties either. I was also trying to cut her off to prevent Hoshi from joining the conversation with her concerns for the Feepit with yellow eyes. However, this didn't seem to bode very well with either of them—Dr. Quilla's face shifted to a sad and stern one, while Hoshi grabbed my arm tightly. She forcibly turned me around to her.

"_What_?"

"Suicide," I repeated, slightly irritated. It was bad enough to admit to it vocally in the first place—it was a thing of utter humiliation, no matter how much sympathy others expressed. Suicide was a personal business that was best kept under one authority. "How about we don't talk about that, ok? How about we talk about how utter screwed I am now? Where am I going to go?"

"Frank!" shouted Hoshi, seeming about to slap me. "We can deal with that later. For now--!"

"Actually, Frank is correct," interrupted Dr. Quilla. "We have very limited time to figure out what is to become of Frank. The Royal Faerie Police will likely do a second sweep, after fully breaking down and analyzing everything in Frank's house. The second time, they'll probably tear the lab apart … and probably shut us down."

"What! No!" I pulled away from Hoshi's arm in my aggravation towards her comment. "They can't shut this place down! I'd rather be captured than have them close our only institute for science!"

"Be reasonable, Frank. Rationality is part of your career, not impulsive subjectivity," Dr. Quilla said calmly. She acted as if her livelihood wasn't in serious jeopardy of disappearing due to me. "Science in Faerieland is becoming more unpopular by the years, especially after the results of our last experiment were published. It's inevitable that the Institute will be closed. And I'd rather it go out in a burst then slowly die from suffocated funding."

"Won't our credibility be smashed?"

"We needn't worry about losing that." Dr. Quilla smiled with sad amusement. "We never had any in the first place. Faeries distrust science by nature."

"Then what's your plan, anyway?"

"Simple, though feel privileged when I tell you. It involves unveiling a good deal of secret projects to you." Her eyes glimmered enigmatically, and for a moment I wondered why I wasn't infatuated with Dr. Quilla, but with Hoshi. Just a glance back at my space goddess gave me the answer.

"Obviously, we cannot ship you to the planet below—it's inhospitable, and so far we haven't been able to find a material that can resist it for the long run, despite sending many probes down there. However, from our highly refined telescopes, we've managed to spot a planet that we have confirmed will support life—and possibly does already."

"Wait, wait, wait. And _whoa_. Why were none of us informed about it?"

"Some were. But we didn't want to spread a pandemonium among the public, though I doubt they would believe us. Our space program has always been under wraps, anyway—only veterans to the Institute, and just a small circle of those besides, are allowed to tamper in such advanced areas. But the progress we have made through this select group have been phenomenal. Which is what leads me to your route of escape.

"We've been building a rocket in the past few years, and about a year ago we finished the final touches. We've been updating it ever since, but through our calculations, it should be fully functional—unfortunately, it's a one man operation, and we only have so much supplies, so whoever went in it'd have to go alone. What I'm suggesting is that you pilot it to that planet—or put it on auto pilot with the coordinates, which is a feature we just added—and establish a base there. We will be able to stay in contact with you through radio, but the conversation will be delayed by five minutes between sending and retrieval when you land on the planet, a procedure the rocket can perform itself.

"The rocket has a machine that can make food out of small carbon blocks that only works when the rocket is in flight—but that will supply you with food while traveling to the planet, which takes around three years. We can supply you with all necessary provisions for building shelter and feeding yourself for up to a year on the planet. But from what we've seen of the planet, it should have plants which are edible.

"Of course, this is a huge risk—though we have overwhelming evidence that the planet supports life, we cannot physically confirm it, as the probes we have sent there are still en route back. There are a whole slew of problems that could go wrong with the rocket, all included in this manual to flying and operating the rocket." She gestured to the table in front of her, patting a thick volume.

"That's encouraging," I said dryly.

"However, if you do make it to the planet, you will be a pioneer for the faerie species," added Dr. Quilla, as if this were some sort of consolation.

I considered the options, weighing them carefully. "Do I really have any other choice besides capture?"

"You could probably hide somewhere, but I think it'd be rather hard to hide with your … appearance. Unless you wanted to become known as a town ghoul." Sometimes I wished Dr. Quilla was less upfront about things.

I decided to make my decision quickly and impulsively, knowing that we would be there all day if I decided to write out a pro and con list, as I would agonize over the details, trying to squeeze out each item for every column. "Then I'm game. Let's do it. Lead me to the rocket, Dr. Quilla, I'm ready to go." I said this with a mock gung-ho attitude, swinging my arms.

"Frank!" Hoshi pulled back on me, turning my head back to her manually. "Frank, consider this seriously. I could probably hide you somewhere. I don't know where right now, but I could probably find somebody." It was obvious by the look in her eyes that a sort of desperation had overcome her. I wasn't sure what had changed this sudden urge to keep me in Faerieland—even in our relationship she had been markedly distant. While I had indulged myself when we fucked fully, she had seemed to stick to the ceiling spiritually, watching as her body committed sinful, lusty acts. Only when she came did she ever express any enjoyment in the process—at those times she would smother her face in my hair (or my blankets, depending how we were fucking) and shake, only speaking once her orgasm passed.

I turned to Dr. Quilla. "Could we get some alone time, maybe?"

Dr. Quilla shrugged and obliged, turning for the exit. "Make it quick, kids." She was almost out the door when she threw us an extra comment: "Clean up after yourselves."

I stared at her back blankly as she walked out the door, surprised at the unabashed crudeness of the comment. Hoshi regained my attention once more, this time by grabbing my crotch. I yelped slightly, and turned back to her, giving her an insulted look. She grinned at me deviously, putting her hands on either side of my hips. "My, how you've grown, Frank."

"You honestly don't think I'm repulsive?"

"With a dick like that? How could I?" teased Hoshi, tickling me under the chin.

"Jeez, you weren't this responsive when I was normal," I chided, half joking, half serious.

"I gave you all I could at the moment, Frank," she explained, nestling her head on one of my thighs. "I was so distant when I was on coke—what I gave you was the fraction of my self that I had left. And with my job … hell, that was all the emotion I could muster after a full day of work. And we fucked whenever you wanted to, right?"

"Fucking isn't an expression of love."

"It was for me."

"Well, thank you then."

"What about an 'I love you'?"

"Hey, I gave you plenty of those!"

"You gave me _one_."

"Yeah, and you didn't reciprocate!"

"It was early in the relationship! I thought it was kind of freaky! You were lucky I even stayed after that."

"Hey, we had just fucked! You said fucking was an expression of love. Therefore …"

"Oh, don't get all scientist on me," she scolded playfully. "With your mind over matter … your logic and reason …"

"Too bad, honey, that's what you bargained for when you got me," I murmured through a smile.

"So where is it? Where's my 'I love you?'"

"Good things come to those who wait." I bent over and kissed her then, wondering if that was permissible in my present form. I suspected she was all talk about not being bothered about my appearance, but by the way she responded, she was genuine. It was as if no time had ever passed from our first kiss to now—there was just as much passion and intimacy in each brush of the lips, each exchange of the tongue, each sneak-peek at our eyes. I had to bend over to allow her to drape her arms around my neck, and my inflated hands awkwardly clutched at her shoulders, adjusting to my new body.

We pulled away slightly, and I gave her the words she coveted. "I love you."

"I love you more," she challenged, sticking out her tongue.

"No way."

"Yes way."

"We'll arm wrestle for it."

"No fair!" She hit me on the forehead lightly, to indicate disapproval yet that of an infatuated individual. We were both enjoying the moment for what it was worth, playing around as we used to do. Glowing in the living nostalgia, we tried to pretend that we both had not dramatically changed from that one wedding—that her hair was still long and she still sniffed coke and I still looked normal and still worked at the lab. The present still lined the edges of our conversation, making the repartee nothing short of bittersweet. Finally, after a few more light-hearted exchanges, we were had to come back to current events, no longer able to skip carelessly through the past.

"Frank, can I ask you something?" The way she was suddenly devoted to studying my flimsy clothing made me suspect something was up.

"Shoot," I replied, my tone becoming softer.

"Next to you when I went in your house … well, Meep was on the floor, and he was dead." Her eyes made a long journey from my chest up to my face, a scared look on her own. "What … what happened to him?"

I looked into her eyes, trying to find an acceptable way to explain to her about the voice—about the mutation, about the unfathomable rage. But how to communicate something so within the self? It was so deeply rooted in personal experience as to defy language, so I gave her what could be physically discerned. "I killed him." She gripped my knees tensely, her eyes widening in disbelief.

"Frank, you didn't—"

"No, I did," I said, silencing her with a finger to my lips. "I killed that Feepit that you played with, too, but only to spare its life. It got injected with the same chemical I was … but it didn't survive. That's why… I used that chemical to try to commit suicide."

"Why not—oh, never mind." She buried her face into my thigh, throwing her hands over her head. "Frank, I don't know. I don't know what's happening to you, I don't know what's happening to me … God, I wish it could just be that wedding again, when I was totally high and just dancing … dancing because it felt good and it was the only thing in the world that was just … _right_. And then you came … you came like it was destined, at the peak of my high … like a fucking _god_ …"

"You were the goddess that night, Hoshi," I said, running my fingers through her hair. "That was the night I found out I'd love you."

"You can be a cornball sometimes, Frank," Hoshi said. I could feel her smile across my thigh.

"What can I say, scientists weren't born to be romantics." We had too little time to be hung up over the details of deaths of Pets. Our time together was numbered, and we could both feel the strain between our relationship already, filled with the vastness of space. She lifted her head and we kissed again, and I slowly eased myself down from the lab table. She picked up on the indication, and our kissing progressed into something more. Used to the softness and maneuverability of a bed, as well as myself in a slimmer body, our twisting of bodies was a bit clumsy, but we managed to compensate quickly. It wasn't the best fuck we've ever had together, but for the equipment and environment we had, we made the best of it and threw away all inhibitions. Our hearts were inflated with the helium of love in its last minutes, pushing our backs to the ceiling to float their in the moment of orgasm. Mysteriously, we came together that one time—that was one of the miraculous events that happened that time, both of us gripping to each other's shoulders in shared ecstasy.

Tears directly succeeded that moment. Not from me—I had sworn, in a typical male fashion, to control my blubbering to be strong for Hoshi. Something about the way the tears fell down her face, though, gave me the impression that my damming of emotions was no more noble and courageous than her outright expression of them. In fact, the purported valor I exhibited seemed almost far weaker than Hoshi's sobbing, her tears directed into my chest. She seemed to transfer her grief to me directly to my heart this way, and soon the mental gates I built to prevent any tears corroded. My eyes watered as I held Hoshi to my chest, feeling her breath against my skin.

"Frank … I don't want you to leave. I've got nothing here anymore, nothing but you. What'll I be when I gone? What can I be? A stupid fucking coke head again, who mooches off her friends? Yeah, _that_ really got me somewhere. I was lucky to even get that job with Fyora! God, Frank, what'll I do? What'll I _be_?" This only added to Hoshi's grief—as of current, she was apparently unemployed, and this was an unnecessary stressor. I held her cheeks in my hands and lifted her face towards mine, wiping away her tears with my thumbs.

"You'll be the Space Faerie, Hoshi. That's all you've got to be."

Her weeping continued, but she no longer ranted aimlessly about the listless nature of her future. Instead, she rested her head sideways on my chest and lay there, closing her eyes. "Your heart beat's so slow now."

"Yeah, in comparison to yours. Yours was always like a fucking butterfly."

"Must be the drugs," she mumbled between lips stifling a smile, but that was quickly washed away by the heartache that hung heavy in the air, depriving us of oxygen to lift our bodies joyfully and spend our last moments in sunlight.

"Remember those times on the roof, Hoshi?"

"Of course I do. How we'd get smashed and wax philosophical, and try to write our thoughts down, but in the morning they were rubbish."

"Morning always makes everything so cold and real."

"You're going to be among those stars, Frank. I'm going to have to look at the sky and search for you. What if I can't find you?"

"Don't worry. If you ever need me again, look to the sky at night. Somewhere among that collection of stars—even if you can't see me--I'll be there, with all of our memories." She gave a soft sob into my chest, but nothing more. She was too tired to cry further—all of the tears in her glands had been wept, and now she could only wallow in our collective misery.

We breathed the air of slow separation across light years and exhaled its stagnancy to inhale it again several breaths later, lying together for what felt like the last time. We stayed like that for a long time, Hoshi sprawled out with only her top on across me and my arms straddling her back defensively, until a knocking came at the door. Reluctantly, I helped Hoshi back into her pants and helped her to her feet. She was lighter than clouds in those moments—her bones full of air and my arms made for weight lifting. I opened the door for Dr. Quilla, who had been standing a few feet back, inspecting her nails.


	11. Chapter 11

"Sorry for keeping you," I apologized. Hoshi nodded, unable to speak as her tear glands had regenerated enough to allow a second wave to overcome her eyes and thusly her voice.

"It's no problem at all," shrugged Dr. Quilla. "The Royal Faerie Police won't be here until tomorrow. However, we must get moving. While you were unconscious, Frank, Hoshiya here and I packed all the necessary supplies." She motioned to the table she had been standing behind. "Grab that manual from the table. You'll need it in the future." I obeyed her commands, sticking it under my arm. Once I came back, she gave a wave of her hand to indicate both of us to follow her. "I'll lead you two to the door of the space project, but further than that, Hoshi, you must stay back."

"Why?" demanded Hoshi, articulate enough to demand a few last seconds with me.

"With the space project, we're operating outside of our funding's mandate. I don't want to risk even a _former_ employee of Fyora seeing any of our illegal activities with their own eyes. Until now, we had been slating the part of the budget poured towards that fund as 'additional supplies' and 'catering services,'" explained Dr. Quilla.

"So _that's_ why the caf was always closed," I mused.

"What does it matter?" Hoshi retorted. "You said this place was going to shut down anyway."

Dr. Quilla considered this logic for a moment, tapping her chin. "I suppose I am contradicting my previous statement … all right. You both may come."

Dr. Quilla led us down a labyrinth of corridors, taking turns, stairways, elevators, and passages that I hadn't known existed in the Institute. (And I knew the place fairly well—I had done some independent unauthorized exploring back when I first arrived.) Dr. Quilla obliterated the obstacle of locks with a single stroke of a key card, and soon we had traveled into the deep belly of the Institute—the mythical, alleged 'upper level' that everyone only heard rumors about. The head scientists, even Dr. Quilla herself, had always insisted that these large rooms on the top floor were for storage alone—but no interns or volunteers really believed that.

"It lives!" I said with a whistle, ducking down to make my way through the doorway. Hoshi looked unnerved by the cramped nature of the walls, closing in tightly from either side. We were traveling down a hallway that led to a highly-armored door at the end with all sorts of security technology at its lock.

"If you noticed, the hallways were purposefully built claustrophobically, so as to discourage curious faeries from venturing too far. Of course, they would've had to go through a dozen security terminals beforehand, so it would be unlikely for them to arrive here. Still, we were absolutely _paranoid_ about security," elaborated Dr. Quilla, and Hoshi shivered.

"You guys did a good job with that whole 'claustrophobia' thing." Faeries, as winged creatures, required a great deal of open space. Dr. Quilla smiled at Hoshi conciliatorily, stopping as we got to the door.

"Don't worry, we'll be in a bigger room very soon."

She seemed to make a sort of elaborate sign language in front of the different security devices, going through each with an almost elegant ease. After a few moments of fiddling, and a few curses under her breath, the door sounded a loud 'bang,' indicating some sort of deadbolt had been opened. With that sound, Dr. Quilla instructed us to step back, and as we did so the door began to split in beautiful, intricate geometry, leading to an enormous room inside.

We entered, and I was quickly struck by the grand scale of the interior. It was in a dome shape above, composed of metal plates that seemed to be retractable, judging by the mechanism attached to each piece of the dome. At the circular wall, there were a variety of machines set up, each leading to a set of tangled wires that indicated a power circuit. Also branching from this circuit was an enormous wire like a trunk, surrounded by a million other wires like ivy vines, connecting to the main attraction in the middle: the rocket.

Immediately, I was struck by how incredibly phallic it looked. It appeared like an obelisk, only rounder around the middle, with tiny little wings at the bottom. It was completely silver, save for the pair of faerie wings painted on the side, composed of all the colors of the elements, a common symbol for a united Faeriekind. On its side was a huge orange container, hooked to it with what seemed like weak bonds compared to the rest of the sturdy structure. There was only one window on the end closest to the ceiling, and the window was tinted to make looking inside impossible. There was a door right beneath the window that was already open, however, giving me an idea of what might be inside. A ladder led up to this opened door, and Dr. Quilla indicated it with a wave of her hand.

"That's what you'll be loading into the ship on."

"I see," I said, my voice shakier than I would've liked. Hoshi next to me was simply slack-jawed, unable to believe what the muscle of science had created. Dr. Quilla reached over and closed her mouth with a snap.

"Dr. Frank, may I ask to talk to you in private for a moment? Just to debrief what's in that charming little manual you have," requested Dr. Quilla, though from her, requests were automatically translated to orders. I nodded numbly, and followed her over to a place near the computers, out of earshot of Hoshi. I don't think she was really that bothered on her exclusion, however—her attention was directed at the mammoth rocket and its intricate technology, and nothing else.

"What's up?" I asked Dr. Quilla, trying to keep the moment light. She grasped my arm gravely, sucking any nonchalance from the moment.

"Frank, this is a serious event. If you don't listen to me now, you could end up dead, or worse."

"What does 'worse' imply?"

"Having your organs pop in the vacuum of space while still living."

"Oh. Okay."

"But seriously. I can tell you right now about the procedure for lifting off—the computers and I can help you from the ground, but once you're out of orbit, your umbilical chord's cut."

Her debriefing would have been confusing to any layman—Dr. Quilla was not particularly good at teaching, though one of the most brilliant scientist I had ever met—but with a combination of gestures, noises, and head-slamming, she managed to spell out what I had to do. She referenced the book often, and told me that if my memory failed, the book was my new Bible. She gave it back to me and then looked me up and down warily.

"So Dr. Frank Sloth will be Faeriekind's first astronaut."

"A what?"

"Someone who explores space. I coined the term myself. Do you like it?"

"It's kind of lame, actually."

"That's why you were still such a low-ranking scientist despite your intelligence—you have the biggest mouth in the world," chastised Dr. Quilla, slapping me on the arm. Her slaps were meant to be playful, but they always left the nastiest bruises. I winced, promising myself internally to tend to the wound later. "Now seriously, Frank. I will miss you dearly. You were one of the brightest young scientists I ever had the pleasure of teaching—and to be honest, I really didn't believe you had any responsibility in that Feepit incident. Though drowning the Feepit was irresponsible," she added sternly.

"Yes, ma'am," I cooed mockingly. She ignored my sarcasm.

"Though Faeriekind may have abandoned logic and science, perhaps you can continue it on other frontiers. There might well be life on that little planet, and I am giving you the mission to give them the gift of knowledge and self-improvement through science. And as always, you have my blessing." She reached for my hand and gave it a delicate kiss, a chivalrous gesture. Though I admired Dr. Quilla and at times found her sexually exciting, I knew full well that she was a male counterpart among the female faerie race and thusly not at all my type. I took the gesture anyway as a sign of platonic love, returning it to her. She looked up at me, inhaled deeply, and then gave an approving nod. "Go."

I turned to leave, but Dr. Quilla seemed to retract her statement of farewell as soon as she dealt it. She grabbed my arm and twisted me around, beginning to pour on another word of advice. "That Hoshiya girl … you're lucky to have her. Few faeries would be so free of vanity, and love you after your transformation. It's a little bit hard for me to look at you right now, honestly."

"Thanks, Dr. Quilla, you really know how to jog the self-esteem," I replied dryly.

"Seriously, Frank. Be thankful for what fate's granted you. I may be a faerie steeped in facts, but I can sense an everlasting bond between the two of you." Then, she added something uncharacteristically crass. "Don't fuck it up."

"Distance makes the heart grow fonder, Dr. Quilla! Oh, and do you think I could get some better clothes than these? I mean, I know I've got fabulous pectorals now, but this new planet might get a little bit cold for chest-bearing after a while."

Dr. Quilla smiled. "They're in your supplies."

I smiled back, and gave her a light-hearted wave good-bye—there was no use leaving her in a fit of angst. Besides, I was urgent to get back to Hoshi for one last farewell kiss, before I left port forever.

By the time I got back to her, Hoshi had fully accepted the existence of the rocket, but still was obviously physically uncomfortable with it. She drifted away from it towards the wall, leaning her body against that wall despite all of the buttons she risked pushing. When she saw me approaching, she ran at me like she had seen me through a field of flowers, jumping up so I caught her legs under my arms, her own wrapped around my neck. She put me in a position where it was impossible to not kiss her, and so we did—one final, passionate, going-away kiss, that lasted longer to compensate for the times we would not be able to give each other kisses in the morning—kisses in the shower—kisses at breakfast—kisses on the roof.

In that moment, I could focus on nothing but Hoshi, and the world was bliss inside her—there was no lingering, looming voice that threatened her sanity and purity, only her delicate body, unfolding itself before me for me to claim. She gave me to herself so freely, so willingly, it made her love look like a ballerina dance—effortless and serene, gliding across the stage. She was crying again, and her tears fell into my mouth in a salty expression of sorrow. She terminated the kiss and rested her chin on my shoulder, her breathing laborious.

"Don't leave, Frank … I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you …."

"I love you too, Hoshi, I love you too. I love you so much. I'll miss you like you'll fucking never know. You'll never fucking know. Oh God …"

I was crying too, now, down her back. She tried to console me by stroking the back of my head, but the tears seemed to be endless. As much as Hoshi tried to calm me, they kept coming. Eventually, I let Hoshi down with tears still leaking from my eyes, stroking her hair softly.

"You have to go now, Frank," she managed to pull out from her mouth, her eyes seemingly struggling to contain another deluge of tears.

"Yeah," I agreed, but didn't move. "Yeah, I probably do."

Eventually, some part of me agreed to go, and overruled the rest of my body. I began retreating, turning my back away from Hoshi, knowing that I would run back if I had walked away with my face towards her. I picked up the manual on the way, having dropped it to catch Hoshi.

I approached the ladder and took one laborious step after another. It wasn't hard to ascend the rungs—but with each step, I knew I was getting further from my old life, and closer to a new one, filled with endless wrong turns and dead end signs that I could unintentionally plow right through. Fear clung at my heart—fear of dying, naturally, before even making it to outer space, but also fear of never seeing that gorgeous face ever again; a suggestion that was, to me, like saying the sun would never rise.

I climbed into the cabin without looking back once I got to the top of the ladder. Though everything was shifted so horizontal had become vertical, from what I could see the inside was fairly cozy, though slightly cramped. I moved towards the front of the cabin, as Dr. Quilla had instructed me, and searched for a big, black seat surrounded by controls that would indicate the captain's seat. I found it in seconds and sat down tentatively, looking around the controls for the headset I was supposed to equip. While I was looking, I pulled on my seat belt that involved latching three separate buckles, all intertwining to make it nearly impossible to breathe. Finally, I located the headset, and grabbed it from its hook on the wall, putting it in place.

"Dr. Quill? Are you there?"

"Yes, Frank. Are you belted in?"

"Three separate belts, yep. I'd say I'm pretty secure." I tried to use flippancy to qualm my fears. It didn't work.

"No security will prepare you fully for the G-forces, but I think you'll be able to handle it. The transformation made you skull fairly thick."

"Is that supposed to be an insult?"

"Take it as you will. Are you ready to launch?"

"Hold on."

I twisted around in my seat, barely able to move my shoulders. Out of the corner of my eyes, I glimpsed Hoshi, fretting at the bottom of the rocket next to Dr. Quilla. Hoshi seemed to be screaming something at Dr. Quilla with the woman of science ignoring her with ease. "Dr. Quilla?"

"Yes, Frank?"

"What's Hoshi so upset about?"

"Don't worry. I think this whole experience is just over-stimulating to her."

"... Tell her I love her for me."

"Didn't you already do that?"

"Dr. Quilla, have you ever been in love?"

"With a fellow faerie?"

"Yes."

"Well then, yes."

"Then you should know 'I love you' can't grow old."

Dr. Quilla on the ground took her mouth away from the microphone and said something to Hoshi, inaudible from where I was. Hoshi began to weep at this comment, and then looked up to the window, mouthing 'I love you' up at me obsessively.

I watched her while I spoke into the headset. "Yeah, you can launch now, Doc."

"All right. Brace yourself. On the count of ten. Ten … "

My eyes were locked on Hoshi, who had crumpled to the ground and was catching her tears with her hands, like a birdbath catches water.

"Nine …"

I knew that the position I currently strained my head in was ridiculously dangerous for take off, what with the whiplash that could occur from the G-forces, but my eyes seemed unable to rip themselves from Hoshi.

"Eight …"

Eventually I managed to twist my head back forward, staring up into the sky. The dome was opening up ahead of me, filling my vision with a crystal blue. The sky was the limit, but the limit seemed undefined.

"Seven … six …"

I gave a final glance back to Hoshi. The rocket was rumbling beneath me, indicating that it seemed to be ready to lift at any moment, but verifying Hoshi's safety took priority to my life. She was still there, and aimlessly threw a kiss to the air with reckless abandon.

"Five … four …"

The rocket was trembling badly now, and I could see a bright flame bursting from beneath the orange tank. I looked around me; all of the material in the cabin vibrated as if it were a child shaking from hypothermia.

"Three … two … one …"

The rocket suddenly seemed to go through me, rising upwards and leaving me behind. But I was still strapped in the seat, and I climbed up into the blue with the rocket, slightly terrified. My knuckles were white from holding to the arm rest, and although Dr. Quilla assured me that she would get me through the atmosphere and out of orbit safely and remotely, she had then proceeded to warn me that even under her control, she couldn't guarantee something wouldn't malfunction.

I tried to relax, but this was an impossible feat. The rocket kept making squealing noises, as if it were coming apart. The few screws that stuck out of the wall seemed to jangle more than they should have, and I wanted nothing more than to grab a screw driver and tighten them, despite the bumpiness. The heat and air conditioning in the cabin seemed to be askew, The fact that I now realized that the orange tank was in fact a large drum filled with gas also made my situation perilous—if even a spark lit in the wrong place, that which was meant to propel me into space could instead, with a fiery explosion, propel me into Hell.

This wasn't even to mention the fact that my features felt like they were distorting yet again—something was pressing me back mercilessly in the chair, and as much as I struggled against it, it succeeded still in pushing me back. It was as if I was deep underwater, crushed by the pressure of a thousand gallons of water. It made breathing nearly impossible, and my eyes rolled back deliriously in their sockets. Outside, the sky was beginning to transition to a carefree blue into a darker shade, growing progressively darker as the rocket roared higher. Soon, stars became visible in what I assumed to be daytime, appearing lightly at first and then growing in intensity to their normal brightness at nighttime. The sky, too, had changed into its slinky black dress of nighttime, all in the span of minutes.

A voice crackled through on the headset, just barely distinguishable at Dr. Quilla's. "You're out there now, Frank. I'm checking the coordinates—they should already be set. Autopilot should get you there in about … three years-ish. Feel free to explore the cabin. Just be sure to look at the manual first."

"Ok." My voice was quavering far more than a single word could let on, which is why I limited myself. I didn't want to convey to Dr. Quilla the utter terror I was experiencing. There was a pause, and then her voice returned.

"Yep, you should be good, Frank. You're just about getting out of orbit now. Any last words to Faeriekind?"

"D-d-damn the m-m-man," I barely managed to stutter.

"Always the political one, Frank. Maybe you could teach that democracy to those aliens, if they're there."

"Y-y-yeah." There suddenly was a struggle on the other side, blurred over by static, and then a new voice broke through the other side, more garbled with static and sounding further away.

"Frank? Frank, are you there? Are you alive?"

"Y-y-yeah."

"Frank, it's Hoshi. You're breaking up like crazy. Can you still here me?"

"L-l-little bit."

"Frank, I love you. Never forget that, ok?"

"O-o-okay."

I wasn't sure if she heard me—the radio went dead after her last comment. The autopilot signal turned on inside the cabin, and I was left to face the stars alone. It was disturbingly quiet in the cabin, and I couldn't find anything in the immediate vicinity to occupy the emptiness in my ears. I was too afraid to unstrap myself and search in the back, so stayed firmly in place. Dr. Quilla had supplied me with a map inside the manual to chart out where my destination was in relation to stars that we knew, but I was too fatigued to grab it, or leaf over any of the pages of instructions in the manual.

Left with only one thing left to do, I stared forward into the deep clutches of space. It chilled me to the core—it was a vast and bodiless predator that lay before me, waiting to consume any thoughtless wanderer. Just staring at its expanse seemed to trigger the voice inside of me, relating with the darkness outside far more than it related with the inherent light faerie qualities I was born with. I could feel it booming in my skull, overwhelming my other senses. I cried out to shove it back, and I succeeded temporarily, falling back on the captain's chair heavily. It would attack later, with varying degrees of success—but a war between the mind is a war the subject always loses. And I would, eventually, lose.

I leaned back my head on the chair and closed my eyes, the backs of my eyelids varying little from the landscape before me, yet comforting in my familiarity. As the lights twinkled behind my shut eyes, a single vision formulated in my mind, outside of the clutches of that terrible, sinister voice. It was a single, immaculate vision, with her voice, momentarily, the only residue in my ears:

Hoshi.


End file.
